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Selling Your Wireless Traffic to Passers-By
An anonymous reader submitted a bit about a company called Joltage who wants to
make it so that home and business users can make a few bucks by
selling
their excess bandwidth to people who just happen to be in the neighborhood.
Besides the obvious security issues, and the serious lack of coverage once you
get out of metropolitan areas, this could be seriously cool.
What happens when someone starts looking up kiddie porn on your connection? Are you liable?
Hacker Media
Serious problem... Joltage wants to encourage people by paying them to extend their network. Many of the benefits, none of the work... nice idea.
The problem is that most end-user DSL (and all consumer cablemodem that I've seen!) Acceptable Use Policies explicitly prohibit reselling the service!
I'm signed up with a Washington State DSL ISP that has been incredible --
- They got me installed when Verizon said I wasn't in a servicable area
- I have their SO/HO level of service
- I can run servers
- I can host my own domain (two, actually!)
- I can NAT and firewall to my heart's content
- I don't have to deal with PPPoE (straight bridge config)
- I get 5 IPs...
But even with all this freedom, I am still not allowed to re-sell access. I run an 802.11a access point, and it's NAT'd off on its' own -- anyone can connect... but I am contractually prohibited from profiting from it.(Can you tell I like this company?)
Personally, I don't think Blarg would have kittens over this. They're not "like that." Object, yes... charge me more, yes. Call in the National Guard... no. However, I can see other ISPs (Comcast comes to mind, with their NAT inquisition) that will scream that this is the end of the world.
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
For 1 simple reason: Terms of Service (TOS) Agreements.
If someone picks up my wireless service and uses it for any length of time, there is nothing anyone can do about it.
The user would need to, at the very least, be FORCED to sign (or at least click) a TOS agreement before using the service.
I can see Johnny Cochran now:
If he did not click, you must acquit!
-D
The security issues of allowing random anonymous people access to an internet connection that is in your name are quite overwhelming. Consider the wide range of things that could be done that would bring the full force of the law down upon you. From fraud to illegal images to death threats against well-known individuals. The police would not accept as a defense that you allow people who you don't know access to your network. You will surely be arrested, which means you will probably lose your job - depending on your employer and of course whether you are released on bail. You might get off on a trial, especially if the search of your home and your computers turns up no evidence against you. If you're lucky, you will get your eqipment back in a timely fashion after your acquital. This is if you get acquited - the details of the case, how much the police/FBI want to get you, and whether they find anything else suspicious on your machines will decide this. You don't have to be charged with anything they find for it to be used as evidence against you - something as simple as an archive of every Phrack - or even a single issue - would weigh heavily against you.
Until this issue is worked out, it does not make sense to make a wireless internet-connected network publicly accessible if you are just an individual.
I don't think people feel like paying... I just noticed this morning, that somebody near by is trying to get dhcp addies from my internal dmz firewall... also seems that their is another ap that has been assoiated with my ap. Welp, once I hunt down this person who broke my wep key, I guess its time to be extra paranoid again.
BTW, its not Illegal to resell your cable/home dsl bandwidth, its just in violation of the contract.
...because you can get it for free, with exponetially more coverage than this scheme offers.
Crank up Netstumbler (http://www.netstumbler.com) on your laptop, and drive around. You'll be amazed at how many open networks you find; at least 2/3rds don't even use WEP encryption. The Linksys wireless AP is now less than $200: they're everywhere (and most are running on the default config, and offer a DHCP IP address with no questions asked).
The best option if this is a service people would actually desire, is to convince the majority of neighborhoods to wire themselves up with high speed ethernet, making each subdivision one high speed local area network, then feed a few T1 lines into the area for upstream (add more as needed) and split the costs over the entire neighborhood. Then have wireless access points scattered throughout. then simply exchange services with other neighborhoods. They're allowed to access yours if you're allowed to access theirs, and you could cover an entire city this way with wireless and it costs nobody anything extra, so long as the user has their home wired SOMEWHERE.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
I can see it now. College students that are in business entrepreneur somehow making or getting their hands on several access points and setting up shop with those things all over the place for passerby's and even when they have long left still collecting commission because the access point is well hidden or scattered. Or any other setting that has loads of bandwidth for free.
This may have been posted already, but...
1) I envision providers figuring out the "Joltage" protocol and generating "fake" sales, just to get more money from the company. (Similar to the initial craze of advertising websites that tried to "pay" you for leaving their banner ads open on your desktop... people hacked it and initally got more money.. until the company's business model imploded.)
2) What's the "Joltage" policy when it comes to customer abuse of the network?
SELECT * FROM USERS WHERE A_WINNER = "YUO";