Why is WIFI automatically connecting to an unlocked router point?

[Gary1]

Hello, I’m using KDE and have a general question about security when using WIFI.

A couple months ago, a new connection started showing up in the list of available displayed when WIFI is turned on. It is the only one that is not locked by a password. It is not my own and it has a very general name, which is the local internet provider with the suffix of wifi.

Now, my machine has started to automatically attempt to connect to it without asking permission and, occassionally, has succeeded without my being aware for some short interval of time. It appears that all options are set to never connect to any location automatically.

Perhaps I’m a bit paranoid but it seems odd to me that anyone would give such a general name to their router and leave it unlocked, when it can easily be seen that all the available connections are locked and have unusual names.

My question is, assuming the worst scenario of someone attempting to deceive people into selecting the wrong connection in order to intercept internet traffic in attempt of obtaining passwords, credit card numbers, etcetera, what can be done on one’s local machine to protect against this?

For example:

1. Can the machine be limited to connecting only to my router?
2. Can specific connections be blocked such that the machine cannot connect even if one accidentally chooses the connection?
3. How can the machine be prevented from attempting to connect automatically to any connection?

Thank you for considering my question and for any guidance you may be able to provide.

[Hanzel]

There was a similar question a few months back:

Auto connect to free wifi - how to disable?

There may be a way to disable autoconnect to Wi-Fi for all connections. I just tested it on my mini-PC and it worked. Hopefully it may be a fix that persists even after system restarts. The fix was found at: NetworkManager device autoconnect option: Meaning and status? - Fedora Discussion Basically, all you need to do is: Identify your Wi-Fi interface. This can be done via several commands in a terminal - I used nmcli device show to confirm my mini-PC’s wifi interface name, which is wlo1: …

Edit: Interesting question, old topic from the internets after some searching
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1257549/is-there-any-way-to-disable-automatically-connect-to-this-network-when-availabl

NetworkManager seems to set the auto-connection to true even if configured not to. This might have changed since 2020. Sadly no machine with linux & wifi to check here.

[Gary1]

Thank you for the links. I’ll give them a try.

The system settings permit me to delete this connection from the WIFI list in system settings but returns the error that it failed, yet it removes if from the list. However, at either the next wake from hibernation or reboot, it is back in the list and set to autoconnect.