CNN is getting all huffy today about something called an "Evil Twin." (They are not, unfortunately, talking about the game available from Gamez. Rated T for Teen. )

This is an 802.11 base station put in by a crook aiming to steal your cookies, and your money.

I don't want to minimize the potential threat. The scam is pretty easy to install. Just put in your own log-on screen in front of all access and throw all the malware you want in return -- a keylogger, or a program that grabs saved password files from the browser. It could work.

But not for long. Here's how you can keep yourself from being victimized, and how the cops (if they have half a brain) can catch this creative garbage in-the-act:

• Encryption. When you're in public, turn on your encryption whenever you're going somewhere important. There are even standards for this stuff. It's not hard.
• Head 'em off at the backhaul. A phony 802.11 hotspot still needs to have some 802.11 service. ISPs don't like selling to crooks any more than you do. They should be on the look-out for new accounts that want to share, insist on notice, check records, and demand identification of all new customers. A little cooperation can go a long way, and once one of these guys is in jail (or even in the dock) it tends to discourage the rest.
• Alert the networks, by which I mean the 802.11 operators, to be on the lookout for these jerks. They'll be happy to cooperate fully when they find one.

All this reminds me of the "fake ATM" scam that came out last year, where a crook put an 802.11 device outside the slot of the ATM and stole the numbers of all those using the ATM by wireless. It sounds foolproof, but it's not that hard to track back to its source.

Same here. Creative, yes. Dangerous, yes. But are you inevitably going to be robbed the next time you sign-in to an 802.11 network in some coffee house?

Not likely.