Worried about privacy? We're in Austria where hotels are required to monitor--by room-- [View all]
downloading on guests' computers!
We were in an apartment for a week in Vienna and I had no problem connecting to their network.
We arrived in Salzburg on Wednesday and are staying in a hotel that offers free wi-fi. I couldn't get
my laptop to connect and couldn't figure out what was the problem. Thought maybe I was in a
dead zone in the hotel, so went out to the lobby. Still, kept getting an error message. The desk
clerk couldn't understand it, said she hadn't previously seen the problem. Next day, same thing.
Went up to the local coffee house, where I am now, no problem connecting to their network!
Talked to a different clerk at the hotel today and she confirmed what I was beginning to suspect--
that for some reason my computer was being blocked from connecting. Why would that be?
Could it be privacy settings on my laptop? Yup.
She told me that Austria REQUIRES hotels to monitor all downloads--by each room--in their hotel.
Said they had been fined for not previously doing so! She claims the coffee houses are subject to the
same rules, as well as apartments rented out to guests! Wow! Talk about Big Brother!
My son works in the info tech biz--so he's set up my laptop. I found one place on my browser (Firefox) options
that I could allow monitoring of sites I visited, but even unchecking that privacy setting still wouldn't allow
connecting at the hotel. He must have some other safeguards set up as well, but I decided it's just easier
to walk to the coffee house rather than try to figure out how to get my laptop to work at the hotel.
Has anyone else run into this kind of problem when traveling?
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