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Marriot Back-Pedals On Wireless Blocking
gurps_npc writes "Marriot Hotels had been illegally blocking Wifi hotspots in Nashville. They thought they owned the airwaves inside their hotel and wanted to charge guests for using them. They claimed to be 'surprised' they were breaking the law. Other hotels have complained to the FCC, asking for permission to do it legally. The FCC had fined Marriot $600,000 for their actions, among other things. They have stopped their illegal blockage, in part because of public backlash and in part because the government told them they were criminals.
How uneducated do you have to be on the topic to believe this? Me? I'm betting some corporate lawyer said they could probably get away with it.
If they sincerely believed they owned those airwaves and could do this, they utterly failed to ask anybody who knew anything about it. That level of ignorance is either epic, or willful.
I think this is more likely a case of them knowing damned well they weren't supposed to, hoping they'd get away with it, and now pretending like it was all an honest mistake. At some point, someone said "ummm, guys, we can't legally do that" and was told to STFU.
I'm glad this got smacked down. And I wonder if movie theaters and other venues won't get caught doing the same thing.
It's about time corporations got reminded they aren't the ones defining what's legal and what isn't.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Even assuming that they were right, if they "Own" the air space in the hotel, they sublet that same airspace to me in my room so interfearing with my cell phone hotspot is still wrong.
/Oblg. Seinfeld clip
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Step 1 is to figure out if the WiFi connection is part of your network or not. There are devices that will do this for you.
Step 2 is if it is part of your network, shut down the port is it connected to. That same device can do this for you.
Step 3 is to escort the customer out of the hotel and deny them a refund due to a violation of the TOS, and possibly bill them additional fees based on the TOS if it were signed.
Step 4 is to create a blanket no WiFi access point policy. Using the equipment from Steps 1 and 2, you can pinpoint Rogue AP locations within a few feet. Once discovered, utilize the signed agreement with the hotel to perform Step 3.
Done.
I mean, obviously it's customer offensive, but if you want to ban WiFi to the point Marriott wants to, these are your options. Exercise them.
Just to play devil's advocate here.... The newer wireless access point products on the market like the Cisco Meraki gear encourage this sort of behavior, with their "Air Marshal" capabilities. They're designed so you can actively DoS wi-fi routers that appear on your network, "unauthorized".
They even have an extra radio integrated in them for this functionality, separate from the ones handling the rest of the wireless traffic.
So arguably, the I.T. folks who set this whole thing up for the hotels might have done so with intentions of preserving the integrity of the paid hotel wi-fi network, and not because "they mistakenly thought they owned all of the airwaves inside the hotel building". It's still an asshole move to set something like this up, IMO ... but a hotel chain that charges for its wi-fi could reasonably argue that it's in its best interests to ensure its paying customers get a good, reliable signal with it. That could be compromised with hundreds of guests setting up their own APs in their rooms.
Dunno if we "pray" to them - it's just that most folks are tech-ignorant and are preyed upon because of that. I noticed crap like TFA first-hand.
I was at a Marriott in ATL (okay, Alpharetta) in late 2013, discovered crap like this (yet they were more than happy to charge $14.99/day for access to their SSID), and promptly decided to change hotels after the 2nd day (I was too busy to swing it on day one). I spent the rest of the week (and my employer's money) elsewhere. I specifically mentioned the wifi shenanigans as a reason why I changed rooms (especially since the La Quinta down the street was far less expensive, the hotspot worked perfectly, and atop that, their wifi was free of charge.) Reimbursement was not a problem after I explained why, and the company I worked for at the time decided to take their future business elsewhere (as a tech company, network access ranks as pretty damned important...)
Vote with your dollars, and even if traveling on business, be damned certain that your employer is aware of why you're doing so, which translates into less money for the offenders. It won't be fast, it won't be easy, and inertia allows asshat corporations to continue their asshattery for awhile, but if the issue is important and broadcast widely enough, withholding patronage does indeed work.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
We're not talking about them blocking wireless hotspots in guest's rooms, that's just overlap. The issue is that they were blocking wireless hotspots in convention space they were renting out, so the individual conventioneers and exhibitors HAD to buy the Marriot wi-fi package at exorbitant prices.
I know I'll get hammered for saying I was in favor of what marroitt did but here me out. When I travel, I'm terrified of connecting to hotel networks. I don't really know which of the many possible SSIDs that I see are the bonified hotel network. And since it's normal on Hotel networks to do some DNS redirection to hand you off to the authorization site, you really can trust anything that masquerades in that way either.
Thus I'd gladly forego the trivial inconvenience of them blocking my wifi tether to my phone network (to bypass the hotel network), if they would take charge of their airwaves and block all rogue hotspots in their building. Peace of mind.
Now the litmus test here would be, are they just doing that to make money by taking away something I have for no extra cost (my cell phone tether) or do they really have my interests at heart in squelching hostile wifi hotspots? And that's really easy to figure out. If they allow short range blue tooth then they haven't taken anything away from me. I can still tether just as well as I could before.
So I gain peace of mind and lose nothing of value if they do this. Why should I not like this.
Now I suppose someone could dream up an edge case like say a LAN party or maybe some poor-mans meeting where one fellow is hosting all the others on his little conference room server. But that's so narrow a case ocmapred to the millions of guests all of whom just want a safe casual ad hoc connection to check their e-mail. Lan pary people too cheap to pay for the connection can probably figure a workaround anyhow.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.