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submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) by Sunny@slrpnk.net to c/technology@lemmy.world

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/25779751

The intative promises to be privacy-friendly with no tracking. Stating:

Your privacy is important. The WiFi4EU app ensures a private online experience with no tracking or data collection. Simply connect and enjoy free public Wi-Fi without concerns.

Source: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/wifi4eu-citizens

Will be interesting to see how this spans and plays out in reality. Looks promising too, did a quick scan of their builtin permissions and trackers and looks good too. (Scanning tool is called Exodus)

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[-] hmmm@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 hour ago

I want to be European so bad.

[-] davidagain@lemmy.world 13 points 9 hours ago

Leaving the EU is one of the stupidest self harming things we ever did.

[-] Jackhammer_Joe@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago
[-] 46_and_2@lemmy.world 4 points 52 minutes ago

UK if I have to guess.

[-] Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 49 points 17 hours ago

Title is wrong. It's an old initiative, not even funded anymore. Ran from 2018 to 2020 with 120 Million EUR.

[-] AlsaValderaan 16 points 11 hours ago

A bit offtopic about a pet peeve of mine, but this is why it'd be super nice if social media that end up getting screenshot had absolute timestamps. Thank you for letting us know.

[-] Sunny@slrpnk.net 12 points 15 hours ago

my bad! I misread the context and had not heard of it before - yet living in the EU. I will change the title. I got confused as I saw their post on LinkedIn, and it was posted recently: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/european-commission_wifi4eu-activity-7359136374895046656-oXYi

[-] PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 21 points 19 hours ago

Ahh yes, border free travel.. wait a minute, why are the Austrian police on the border here? Wait a minute, why are they stopping us..

[-] themurphy@lemmy.ml 8 points 13 hours ago

Because it's border free travel for EU citizens. It's still another country you enter, as of course, there are rules.

They stop you to check. You obviously pass through.

Also, there's still illegal import rules.

[-] possumparty 2 points 11 hours ago

It's still schengen rules, so if you take a train the likelihood of being stopped at the border is pretty low. Austria may have border agents board the train and verify passports, but that's still pretty uncommon in Europe.

[-] Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 34 points 23 hours ago

Well I don't know if that's a good use of EU money. I'd rather see investments in large and difficult infrastructure, rail, software, datacenters, industrial sectors we're currently lacking, grid investments - stuff like that.

End user internet access is more like thousands of small decentralised projects. The coordination might make it easier to use compared to if everyone did their own free wifi project, but that's such a small benefit...

[-] iglou@programming.dev 10 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

As always, it's not like both aren't possible. As a matter of fact, there is a lot of railway projects ongoing at the same time, to only quote one of your examples.

A government can take care of more than one issue at a time, luckily.

It may be a small benefit for you (I assume you are german based on your server), but not every european country or citizen has the same access to internet. This is a good initiative, but obviously not primarily intended for the richer citizens/countries of the union.

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[-] Baleine@jlai.lu 18 points 23 hours ago

I'm sure we could invest in all of them and money wouldn't be the problem.

[-] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 27 points 1 day ago

I think this is mostly for non-EU tourists. You don't pay for roaming in EU anymore so you don't really need WiFi when traveling.

[-] ook@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 20 hours ago

Well, speak for yourself. I don't have a running phone contract because I don't really use my phone much for calling or stick to open WiFi when I need to be online. Just got top-up mobile data for the times when there is no WiFi.

I definitely do want WiFi when travelling.

[-] TheProtagonist@lemmy.world 11 points 23 hours ago

Recently mobile phone operators introduced a “fair use policy”, so it’s not really a”roam like at home” anymore, but data volumes can be limited to a fraction of what you are entitled to in your home country.

This is a point where WiFi might get more important again when traveling.

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[-] biotin7@sopuli.xyz 6 points 18 hours ago

But why an App & not a PWA ?

[-] Sunny@slrpnk.net 4 points 15 hours ago

Would have been nice indeed, however there is a web version: https://wifi4eu.ec.europa.eu/#/list-accesspoints

[-] JackbyDev@programming.dev 4 points 18 hours ago
[-] biotin7@sopuli.xyz 3 points 15 hours ago

PWAs are easy to maintain & lightweight

[-] JackbyDev@programming.dev 2 points 14 hours ago

Not saying they aren't, just that a lot of folks will probably search their phone's app store and if they don't see it assume it doesn't exist for their phone.

[-] biotin7@sopuli.xyz 1 points 14 hours ago

Who said PWAs can't be put in an appstore ?

[-] hisao@ani.social 99 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

It's mind-blowing how at the same time some EU government guys pushing stuff like DSA while other do something like this (which is nice, and a complete opposite, if it's not honeypot anyways).

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[-] giacomo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 53 points 1 day ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

oh dude, they promised to be privacy friendly! maybe I'm just too american to believe in promises.

You don't have to trust them any more than you trust your local Starbucks WiFi. We're at the point where your traffic should no longer be vulnerable just because you're on the wrong WiFi network.

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[-] Arcane2077@sh.itjust.works 6 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

So, if I live in the EU, what's stopping me from cancelling my home plan and making the wifi experience worse for everyone?

[-] Blackmist@feddit.uk 27 points 20 hours ago

The fact that there's 93k access points and that's not very many when you consider the size of the EU and the average range and speed of an access point.

[-] herrvogel@lemmy.world 8 points 18 hours ago

Limiting the bandwidth use of individual devices is pretty easy, and basically standard procedure for public networks. Even cheap consumer routers that come with ISP subscriptions can do that.

[-] Hule@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago

Free Wireless ISP, you say?

cheapskate romanian sounds

[-] TheSaddestMan@lemmy.zip 1 points 10 hours ago

Oh, sure. That's fair. Just like how the US kicked the Natives off of their land.

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this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2025
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