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Neighborhood WiFi Security

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the put-out-an-electronic-welcome-mat dept.

picaro writes to tell us the New York Times has an interesting piece about the abundance of open wireless connections available due to the lack of the average user's knowledge. The article also takes a look at how the prevalent attitude is that tapping in to these connections does not equate to stealing and why still other may disagree. From the article: "Piggybacking, the usually unauthorized tapping into someone else's wireless Internet connection, is no longer the exclusive domain of pilfering computer geeks or shady hackers cruising for unguarded networks. Ordinarily upstanding people are tapping in. As they do, new sets of Internet behaviors are creeping into America's popular culture."

7 of 328 comments (clear)

  1. RTFM by xgadflyx · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Some users say they have protected their computers but have decided to keep their networks open as a passive protest of what they consider the exorbitant cost of Internet access.
    That would be the category I fall under. I think everyone should follow the sharing principle, lock your box, and open the AP. No matter what deviant may come around and use your access, you can always prove it wasn't you. Now it may be a hassle and even cost a bit of cash..., which we all know sucks, but I've been sharing my wifi for nearly 3 years now and have had no problems. Plus, I've always appreciated the neighborhood open-ness eg. when cable modem users go down and the DSL subscribers are still kicking it, just hop right over and keep on keeping on.
    "I'm sticking it to the man," said Elaine Ball, an Internet subscriber who lives in Chicago.
    "Whoa sweetheart, slow down. We're just talking about sharing internet connections, nothing more" -me, an internet subscriber who lives in Columbus First post?
    --
    Civilization, the death of dreams.
  2. Take a bike, leave a bike by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Some cities have implemented systems where you can borrow one of the public bicycles that are painted with an ugly colorscheme and use it to go where you need to go. Someone can then, in turn, borrow that bike from you after you've parked it. It's an interesting system because the bikes are just community property and everyone has the right to ride them.

  3. New occurences in American culture... by necro2607 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ordinarily upstanding people are tapping in. As they do, new sets of Internet behaviors are creeping into America's popular culture.

    Yeah, like computer users getting sued by the RIAA when they have never used any P2P software on their machine, for example...

  4. *gasp* by scenestar · · Score: 5, Funny

    As they do, new sets of Internet behaviors are creeping into America's popular culture.

    you mean "SHARING" something?

    --
    perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
  5. Semi-related story by necro2607 · · Score: 5, Funny

    In a semi-related story... I was at a friend's place last week and I wanted to transfer to him some audio-recordings of my band's recent practice. I asked him, "Do you have a wireless network or anything set up here?" ... He said how he didn't want to "get into that wireless stuff" because there are apparently so many people who would hack into his wifi network or whatever. That, and there are people who drive around in vans with gear to hijack peoples' wireless networks.

    During the minute or so that he was going on about this stuff, I found about 3 open wireless networks in range. I connected to one of them, logged into MSN Messenger and laughed as he saw a little notification pop up on his PC screen that indicated that I had just come online.

  6. I love open wifi.. by brxndxn · · Score: 5, Funny

    I was sitting at a McDonald's with my laptop during a road trip. There were two wifi networks available. One was titled 'McDonald's' and the other was titled 'BetterThanMcDonald's.' I used the latter. I love when people do that..

    --
    --- We need more Ron Paul!
  7. Bizarre attitudes by caffeination · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I got into this article without signing up yesterday. Can't today, so I'm quoting from memory.
    ...I thought "Oh my God! People could be using my connection too!".
    Six months later, however, $Person still hasn't secured her wireless network.
    My parents were the same. I took my laptop into the garden, showed them that I could get onto their connection from at least 50m from the house, then I connected to the neighbours' connections and changed their essids to demonstrate how easy such things are. Then I opened ethereal and demonstrated to them how easy it was to read peoples' internet traffic.

    All I got was "That shouldn't be allowed".

    Under my own initiative, I then put a fairly long encryption key on their network and password protected the router config. I know it's weak security, but it's better than none at all.

    That is how much people care about security. I explained to my uncle the other day about how spyware can log your key presses and report them back to a server. He was shocked and outraged, for about 1 second. Once his computer was clean enough to be usable, he was satisfied (this is a home & business computer, used for EBAY).

    Nobody gives a shit about anything to do with computers. It seems that the current parent generation was lead to believe that technology would make life easier and do all the work for them, when the reality is that it's actually replaced much of the work. God knows what long term effects this will have on computing.