From the first moment news of the Firesheep plugin came to light, folks have been asking what the best way to avoid having massive issues with might be. And to that end, I have seen countless ideas presented on how to stop Firesheep from becoming a problem in your own world. But there is something that we all need to remember — packet sniffing isn’t a new idea. This flaw in how data floats back and forth isn’t limited to just the guy in the coffee shop who thinks he’s a “hacker” now because he figured out how to take advantage of a plugin to potentially ruin someone’s day.

So all of this being said, what is the “best” way to stop Firesheep right in its tracks? It’s certainly true that FireShepheard is cool for stopping Firesheep. And yet for my money, it’s to never be connected to the public wifi in the first place. Perhaps an extreme approach to things, the fact of the matter is if you’re connected to a mobile network instead of the typical coffee shop wifi, you’re chances are much better and not finding yourself in a world of hurt later after you’ve found most of your accounts messed with.

Another approach is to VPN or SSH into your home office or place of work. For most people, the easiest is to VPN into work. But obviously this is not always going to be an option. So this would leave OS X SSH solutions for those looking to “dial back into their home office.”

Without question the easiest option for Mac users is going to be to simply stick with the 3G/4G dongles or opt for remote access software that allows you to use your home’s browser installation on your main Mac, remotely. Clearly not the smoothest approach, but it’s certainly cheaper than going with a mobile carrier for Internet access. Hate the idea of a monthly bill? Consider one of the various pay-per-use Wimax dongles available on the market. Both T-Mobile and Sprint offer these, although I’ve heard that Sprint has had better success of working well with OS X than T-Mobile.

And there we have it. The options for avoiding Firesheep are pretty clear.

1. Stay home
2. Mobile broadband
3. VPN or SSH access elsewhere

You will note that I did not mention using those cheesy plugins that force HTTPS. That is simply poor practice and something that I would personally avoid myself. Why? Because they don’t always work and many sites out there simply don’t always provide SSL options for security. So common sense prevails here.