Ah, first world problems. Where I am, data connections are out of reach for the vast majority of the population (yet somehow, they all seem to have smartphones - go figger).

Everyone goes to the mall, not to shop, it would seem, but to use the free wifi and bask in the comfort of free aircon.

Captive portals are here to stay in places around the world, and like it or not, they are a widely used solution that is not going away any time soon. I for one applaud the author of this website's attempts to shine light on the problem of authenticating to this network type.

There are still part of the world where you are require by law to log who is accessing the internet, in case he/she does something illegal.

Yet another fantastic reason to get rid of captive portals. They spy on you _and_ are frequently broken.

> The overwhelming majority of captive portals I see are just trying to get your contact info...

IIRC in some countries they're required (by law) to do so, because, y'know, terrorists.

Far worse than terrorists, filesharers.

Most captive portals I run across are trying to verify that you are in fact a paying customer. Typically by making you enter your hotel room number and name or something.

Normally you would think it would just be easier to set a wifi password and skip the captive portal nonsense, but so many vendors harbor the fantasy that other people will pay for the wifi so they have to leave it open and put a "buy 24 hours of internet for only $30!" link in there.

I hate captive portals. They are such a nuisance, especially when you have your machine configured to always connect via VPN.

I don't want your shitty slow internet. I want to pay $20 for fast enough Internet on a plane, not some 56.6kbps bullshit.

$20 is one month worth of broadband in some countries. Anybody can do what he wants with his money, but $2 would be a more appropriate price tag for a few hours of Internet. If you're working, $20 could be OK though because you're gaining more.

It also depends on where you are. Getting high-speed, low-latency internet to a shopping centre in the middle of a metropolitan area is probably a bit easier and cheaper than getting it to a plane flying 40000 feet above the Atlantic. And while I probably wouldn't pay $20 for eight hours of internet on a plane (unless I really needed it), I don't find the price tag entirely unjustified.

On a plane?

> but $2 would be a more appropriate price tag for a few hours of Internet

Correct. That's (one of the reasons) why Starbucks coffee is pricier.