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Passive-Aggressive Wi-Fi Hotspots
the digital nomad writes "If you've had enough of your neighbor stealing your Wi-Fi connection or letting his dog s#%t on your lawn, there is now a better solution than suffering in silence with your brooding anger: leave your neighbor 'a message!' Passive-Aggressive Wi-Fi Hotspots let your networks say what you cannot. And if you're looking for some great name for your Hotspot, make sure to read this post by Gizmodo."
Or you could...you know...actually secure your wifi.
Living With a Nerd
I'm dong that even as we speak.
But seriously I agree with you. If you're in a fixed place like your home, it makes more sense to just plug into a nearby jack (in my case - a phone jack). It will provide a faster connection, and doesn't broadcast your data all over the neighborhood for people to see (like those black BBC vans with the antennas).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Set up your devices with static addresses and set a dhcp scope above the addresses that you need. Then you transparently redirect any http request originating from the dhcp scope to say, www.google.com (or something nastier to be left to your imagination), using the power of iptables. Now, no matter what website the piggy backer tries to visit, he will be greeted with the ubiquitous google.com home page. Watch how quickly the neighbors will learn to leave your network alone.
You're an asshole. Whatever happened to Love Thy Neighbor?
If I found out you were doing that to me, I'd beat your nerdy ass till it was blue.
Retard. People like you are the reason no one likes their neighbors.
I mean, how hard would it really be if every router shipped with a unique SSID and a default random password?
Not very..AT&T has been managing this with their CPEs for at least 4 years. They simply use the serial # printed on the CPE as the default password. Unique and not likely to be guessed.
The routers that verizon hands out with their FiOS service do exactly this. They have a unique 6 character hexadecimal string as the SSID, and each has a unique WEP password that's printed on the bottom of the router on a sticker.
Now I know this isn't perfect (WEP security limitations aside), but it's sure as hell better than every single customer in my apartment complex having "Linksys" or "Netgear" access points with no encryption and default passwords.
I quickly ran into a limitation on the size of the NAT with this freebie router so I run my own router as the primary, and simply use the Verizon device as a bridge/media converter so my set top box can obtain guide info and IPTV (on-demand video) since it only has a coax interface.
Well, needless to say, he was a computer moron.
Well, you're the moron who can't get windows XP to connect to your own wireless network.
Pot, kettle.
By that reasoning, if you leave your front door open, and somebody actually wanders in and takes something, they cannot be charged with theft.
Nope. Not the way it works.
Similarly, using another person's computer resources without explicit permission to do so, even if those resources appear to be freely available, is still illegal.
Whether or not a person who leaves his computer open in such a way may appear to deserve to be inviting such activity is as irrelevant as the the fact that they make consumer vehicles that go over a hundred miles an hour could be perceived as inviting people to exceed the speed limit.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
This is acting like a dick. It's not his fault you can't configure your wife's laptop, and it's not his fault that he didn't know how to lock down his router.
What did your little episode teach him? To come ask the asshole next door (who hacks his system on the sly to annoy him) next time his computer has a problem? Why not just ask him to do it nicely, or offer in the first place? Oh yeah, because you wanted to harass him and make money out of him. Nice.
Hope your plumber/mechanic/etc neighbours pull the same trick on you sometime.
I'd like to see my neighboor get into my wired network.
It's easy to get your wish granted. Just invite him to your flat, tell him to bring his laptop with him, and then offer him a cable to connect. Make sure you watch him while he gets into your wired network, because if you don't, you'll probably not see it.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
...there's an AP called "banislam". I find it agreeable. I also love censorship. Don't you, /.?
Just redirect them to an unsigned page, 4/5 people won't notice the difference (they've all clicked the don't warn me again check boxes at some point of other).
Holy crap, why didn't you just talk to your neighbor to begin with? Talk about passive aggressive. The real moron here is the one who couldn't get the laptop to ignore a wifi network.
#!/
I've never had the problem you describe with XP. I set the rogue SSID to manual connect, and it never bothers me.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
In the real world, it just opens up yourself to litigation if someone does something illegal over your network.
I suppose you have one, single, real-world example where this has actually happened? I mean, you wouldn't just be throwing out frightening hypotheticals, would you?
But you neglect the fact that there is a protocol.
By publishing the ESSID, you invite other to connect to your network.
There is no need to publish an ESSID, and you could always lock the network.
If you leave the door open, and put a sign outside that says "come in", people might come to your house. For example, that's how retail works, and that's why we don't put "come in" signs at our front doors.
They were both morons. The neighbor just lacked knowledge, while the poster lacked knowledge, research skills (I'm sure the answer is in knowledge base), and apparently is a sociopath.
I even if solving the problem at the neighbor's router was the best solution, wouldn't it have been more neighborly to just ask him to set the SSID to hidden, and maybe tell him how to secure his router? What's with the BOFH abuse and then charging his neighbor for the privilege. They had a mutual interest in tweaking the router, so they should have been able to come to an agreement which didn't involve money changing hands: turning off SSID makes the router less useful to its owner.
Your neighbors are your neighbors. You're supposed to talk to them, loan and borrow tools and knowledge (within reason. obviously you wouldn't do a free surgical consult). Setting a password is a "do it while chatting over coffee" activity. You wouldn't bill your neighbor for helping nail down plywood shutters before a hurricane and you shouldn't bill you neighbor for helping him type 8-14 letters in a text box and clicking enter.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
If I caught my neighbors using my wifi, I'd ask them how they cracked WPA2-AES.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Oh shut up you pedantic, humorless idiot.
Trouble with your analogy is that wifi routers default to being relatively secure these days. you would be hard pressed to buy a router within the last few years that wasnt secure by default.
If the owner has made his router open its practically certain that it was intentional.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
If you had access to the router why didn't you just but a ban on your wife's laptop to prevent it from being able to join?
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
Someone else being a jerk first does not make your actions less rude.
So because you can't operate YOUR computer properly (XP connecting to this guy's router), you decide to fuck up his internet?
Asshole.
With the first link, the chain is forged.