UK Police Cracking Down on Broadband Theft

dubculture writes "A 39 year-old man in West London was arrested for dishonestly obtaining free internet access" from an unsecured wireless router nearby. The article discusses a couple of other cases, including one where a fine of £500 (~US$1000) was handed out for, essentially, taking advantage of someone else's inability (read: apathy) towards securing their home network."

Comments

Hmmm.

[Colin Smith]

in Germany, pretty much all access points are secured. In the UK, pretty much only those owned by IT people.

In Germany the owner is responsible for the traffic. In the UK, they're not. Perhaps the average British person is just dumber than the average German. Perhaps personal responsibility makes a difference.

Re:Hmmm.

[Anonymous Coward]

In the UK, pretty much only those owned by IT people.

Uh, have you actually met any UK "IT people"? Most of them are still waiting for their 386 to boot up. To them, anything "wireless" is what they use to listen to cricket!

Re:Unlocked door?

[kimvette]

Broadcasting an SSID and not locking the WAP is an invitation to use the connection. Don't want people on it? Read the freaking manual and lock it down. Don't invite people in. This is akin to putting a television out on the front lawn with a sign saying "free TV" and then pressing charges for larceny when someone takes that advertised television.

HTH!

Re:my SSID is FREEINTERNET

[Osty]

I could care less if my neighbors use my connection

So you do care? (hint: If you "could" care less, you obviously do care. If you "couldn't" care less, you don't.)

I would prefer it because then they will not be asking me to come over and fix theirs every day

Ever tried saying no? I know, it's a foreign concept to many people, but unless your neighbors/friends/family are paying you to fix their connection you have no obligation to fix it for them. If they keep breaking it, they either need to learn how to fix it themselves or pay somebody to fix it for them.

Isn't it about time...

[xednieht]

we drop a bomb on the Brits? They believe in monarchs, they have bad teeth, and now this?

I think they need another good ol' Yankee ass-kicking.

Re:Theft is theft

[MutantEnemy]

Secret Buildings...

No photographs please. We own the light.

Re:Preemptive Strike

[garcia]

But people should also stop taking advantage of the ignorance of other people, too.

Then Microsoft and Apple should issue immediate patches to their operating systems that disable that from occurring.

Oh, those two companies already take advantage of the ignorance of other people. Sorry.

Re:quite wrong

[coryking]

Every Vista machine I have got connects only to unsecured networks by default You are trolling, but in case anybody believes this and thus doesn't try Vista...

Vista gives you a nice fat warning before you connect to any kind of insecure wireless network. You must first click "yes" before it connects. Post SP2, XP did this as well. XP did not, however, let you modify your file & printer sharing, your media sharing, and some other stuff based on the access point.

Now, unless I'm missing something, OS X (at least "jaguar" or whatever) will be more than happy to connect to any old unsecured network without telling you. In fact, in my observation it sometimes likes to connect to my neighbors unsecure network over my own secure one seemingly at random and without even telling me it just hopped over. If anybody should be raked in the coals over poorly implemented WiFi, it is Apple.