Businesses offering free wifi to attract customers should observe a minimum responsibility for security.

Beware of scammers and hackers in free wifi zones! Businesses offering free wifi to attract customers should observe a minimum responsibility for security.

Went to a coffee shop in the middle of Canberra, inside a shopping centre this morning. The shopping centre offerred free wifi.
For the purpose of this post, I'll refer to the business as "ACoffeeShop".
So did the coffee shop -the logon details on the back of the coffee machine. Their SSID (wifi network name) was not the same as the name of their coffee shop. Confising if not paying attention.
Worse still There were the following wifi networks available:
- ACoffeeShop_CBD (always available)
- ACoffeeShop_CBD_guest (dropped in and out)
- ACoffeeShop_CBD_g_guest (dropped in and out)
- ACoffeeShop_CBD_n_guest (dropped in and out)

To my thoughts it seemed like they may have had a secured staff wifi (was always available ), but someone was trying to spoof their wifi by offering the three guest networks.
I approached the staff. They said that they had tried to shut down the old wifi but couldn't, and couldn't do anything about do anything about the spoofing.
Realistically it is difficult for a small non-IT focused business to stay on top of such problems. This does not mean that no responsibility for issues arising from their offer of free wifi. At a minimum, they should signpost that it is known that wifi spoofing has been occurring - a courtesy warning to patrons.
This does highlight for the general public the rule of buyer-beware, and note that free offerings will always have their draw-backs.