Free Wi-Fi: the Movement To Give Away Your Internet For the Good of Humanity

pigrabbitbear writes "We are strangely territorial when it comes to our wireless networks. The idea of someone siphoning off our precious bandwidth without paying for it is, for most people, completely unacceptable. But the Open Wireless Movement wants to change all that. 'We are trying to create a movement where people are willing to share their network for the common good,' says Adi Kamdar, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. 'It's a neighborly thing to do.' That's right, upstanding citizen of the Internet, you can be a good neighbor just by opening your wireless network to strangers — or so the line goes. The ultimate vision is one of neighborhoods completely void of passwords, where any passerby can quickly jump on your network and use Google Maps to find directions or check their email or do whatever they want to do (or, whatever you decide they can do)."

Comments

Bad idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone finds and an open WiFi, DL's some CP, you get the blame. One of the many reasons they can have my Cat 5e when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.

Re:Bad idea.

[Obfuscant]

Easy to fix. If you want to access someone's WiFi, you log into the proxy server on that network.

What is the practical difference between "closed wifi" and "open wifi with a mandatory log-in"? In both cases you must obtain a credential (and thus implied permission) to use the network. You've just moved the access limit from the radio to the wire side.

In general, though, the reason this movement will fail is the same reason why people want it to work. Selfishness. The same person that says "I would like to have wifi without paying for it when I am somewhere not home" has already said "I don't want to pay for my own 3g/data plan so I can have network access when I am not home". That same attitude would result in "why should I pay for network at home if I can get it free from my neighbor".

In the final result, everyone who wants free wifi wherever they go will be the ones who are least likely to provide free wifi to others, and that means the entire system is a self-fulfilling failure.

If you notice, most of the free wifi you find is not from altruistic people, it is from businesses that want to lure you into their establishment so you'll be likely to buy things from them. Profit motive. The altruist who opens his home network to free wifi for others has no profit motive, and while it is wonderful he exists, there is no incentive other than personal pleasure for him to do it. He can't depend on it being repaid, and he can't depend on it not being abused.

Re:Bad idea.

[rarumberger]

Maybe so. Let's imagine a scenario:

Cops determine that someone has been downloading CP, and trace it back to your house. They launch an immediate investigation, with you as the obvious prime suspect. They're aware that they can't prosecute on IP alone, so they do their diligence, and after searching your seized devices, they exonerate you. Publicly, even.

You still lose your family and your job, and your life is basically over, because your name once appeared in a report investigating kiddy pr0n. You will be personally threatened, maybe even assaulted, by vigilantes who want to "protect" their children from "monsters" like you. There is literally no amount of public exoneration that will make the average Joe believe you're not a pervert.

Me? I'd rather just keep my wireless secure.

Open network?

[Dins]

Sure, I'd be more than happy to open my wifi network...if it meant I wasn't going to be liable for what a guest does on it....

but my LAN security!

[MyDixieWrecked]

If I decided to do this, I would need to operate my LAN like every node was bare on the internet. I've got fileservers with guest access (for, you know... houseguests), web services, my invoicing system, and a whole slew of other personal services. The thought of open wifi on the LAN kinda scares me from a security perspective.

Given that the majority of people out there aren't security conscious, there are all kinds of implications for keeping default router settings/passwords.

When I was staying in the Oakwoods in Burbank, CA for work (long-term housing, like... for months), I could see every machine on the LAN and all of the windows machines had read-only filesharing on, so I was able to loot up on all kinds of raunchy porn that people downloaded from limewire. One guy even had a bunch of tax documents in a shared folder. This included a PDF of the lease on his lexus, and some credit card statements. Another guy had 8GB of photos of his kids and family.

Shit can be dangerous out there if you're not careful.