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Wireless Hijacker Dealt First UK Punishment
paella_dodger writes "The BBC is reporting on a recent UK court case whereby a man was fined £500, sentenced to 12 months' conditional discharge and had his laptop confiscated for browsing the 'net on his neighbour's wireless Internet conenction. Perhaps I should secure my neighbour's wireless connection for him before Windows automagically connects to it and gets me arrested!"
``before Windows automagically connects to it and gets me arrested''
Fortunately, most courts still discriminate between intentionally and accidentally doing something. If you're connecting to someone else's wireless network from your car (which, I assume, means that you don't have any wireless network facilities of your own around), it's pretty hard to maintain that you did it by accident.
On the other hand, if my mom is found to use the neighbor's network to access the Internet, it will be pretty hard to maintain that she was doing so on purpose. All she knows is that computers can be used as glorified typewriters. GUIs are not for her, much less wireless network configurations.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Not really. Despite the BBC hedging it's bets, and putting the conspiracy angle on it a touch, The Register has a clearer account of what happened.
Basically the bloke was engaged in Wardriving, and deliberately hooked into the wireless network.
It'll certainly be murky waters when windows automatically selects the average joe's router instead of their own, but with many routers at least asking people to put better security on wireless points, this should start becoming less frequent.
From all accounts, he was caught tapping away on his laptop, moved away when police watched, then came right back to the same point again. At which point he was investigated as he looked a little 'suspicious'.
Wardrivers remember! Just because you're invisible in the network, it doesn't make you invisible to the local copper walking on the street, or the local neighbourhood watch!