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

Posted by Soulskill on from the leeching-is-bad-form dept.

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)."

11 of 505 comments (clear)

  1. Bad idea. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Bad idea. by Obfuscant · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Bad idea. by rarumberger · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Bad idea. by QRDeNameland · · Score: 5, Informative

      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".

      I can't speak for others, but I'd consider providing free access to my wifi under 3 conditions:

      1) There is a brain-dead simple way to ensure that my internal network is secure from anyone using it as an open access point,

      2) a similarly brain-dead way to limit how much can be downloaded per open access client, and

      3) legal assurance that I was in no way liable for anything downloaded from my open access point.

      While the Open Wireless Movement (OWS - is that a conicidence?) could probably easily provide the first two, the third is a matter of legislation and thus is the real sticking point. I imagine there are many others like me that don't recoil at the very idea of someone "freeloading" and would be happy to provide a service to the community, but if I'm going to face any chance of liability for doing so, or if it's just a matter of being a PITA to set up, then it's not happening. If it were easy AND there were no potential legal consequences, I think you'd be surprised how many folks would *not* be that selfish.

      --
      Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
  2. Open network? by Dins · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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....

    1. Re:Open network? by Defenestrar · · Score: 5, Informative

      You aren't liable and you'll probably get a successful good free lawyer (well free to you) if anyone gives you grief.

      Worried about your door kicked in? I'd say it's your civic duty - and if my reasons aren't good enough for you, maybe you'd consider the optional counter-suits like winning the lottery

    2. Re:Open network? by mea2214 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I've been running an open wifi for over a year with no problems so far. I have a dual ethernet linux box running iptables with a set of white listed ports allowed through. My wifi routers are mere access points all switched on a single subnet to the linux firewall. Over time I looked at generated traffic and opened up ports various devices use for legitimate services like 993, 587, 443 etc. I block all UDP ports except 123, 4500 and 500. Some services, like iCloud, like to abuse the network using UDP. streams. That along with all unauthorized port traffic gets dropped (using -j DROP) into the bit bucket -- the device deserves no response from the firewall. Bittorrent simply doesn't work in this environment out of the box (although I acknowledge it's possible a determined someone could rig something to make it work but people who know how to do that are rare and it's probably not worth their time because I'll probably eventually catch them). I also detect bad SSL sessions by monitoring the first pushed byte sent over whatever TCP ports I leave open. Tcpdump runs constantly and I have some perl scripts to analyze the traffic and create reports of usage. This allows me to see if some new legitimate service needs a port open or if devices are trying to abuse the network which gets them banned by perl script. Skype doesn't work either and I have found it to be a particularly obnoxious service making it look like Bittorrent. Anyone pounding on Skype to get it to work gets banned by IP address. And all port 80 goes through a Squid proxy. Granted a determined user could get around my bans for awhile but for the most part I have found the real obnoxious actors are bad services like Skype and iCloud. And for the most part people use port 80 for web and 443 for encrypted stuff.

      So far things have worked out and I get around 250 unique visitors per month. The vast majority of users just get on, do some stuff like check mail or train schedules and get off. I have been doing this more or less as a "science project" to see how these modern devices communicate. Plus the neighbors get Internet access. I have found the bandwidth used per month is rather trivial. I just recently got a tablet with just wifi and so far have had no problems with anything not working through my iptables with white listed ports.

  3. Two issues... by slasher999 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Fair usage based on your agreement with your provider likely prohibits this meaning you would be in breach of contract and subject to cancellation, at least here in the US, and rightfully so in my opinion. Secondly, sounds like something the child porn perverts would love to see happen to assist them in evading detection while they prey on our children. Sorry, I won't be participating in this. Ever.

  4. but my LAN security! by MyDixieWrecked · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --



    ...spike
    Ewwwwww, coconut...
  5. Did this already, was asked to stop. by NoahsMyBro · · Score: 5, Funny

    Years ago I set up a free wi-fi network from my house, and called it something like 'Free WiFi'. A few weeks later a neighbor asked me to stop.

    He regulated his kids' internet usage, and they had been using the free network to get online during those times when they were prohibited from doing so.

    So I turned it off.

  6. Re:Hypocrite by MozeeToby · · Score: 5, Informative

    QoS gives packets different priority based on the type of data and net neutrality allows for that. What net neutrality doesn't allow for is differing priority based on the server; specifically, it doesn't allow you to treat packets from your servers preferentially and it doesn't allow you to blackmail other service providers for faster speeds. As for providing a guest with a slower connection than yourself, that is no different than an ISP giving different bandwidth speeds depending on your service level and has nothing to do with QoS or net neutrality.