Posted on 01/07/2008 10:46:22 AM PST by SubGeniusX
Again, you have to be careful with analogies. Is there a time limit or a by-the-minute charge or a by-the-megabyte charge?
I have to disagree. Bandwidth is a fixed quantity for which the owner of the AP pays. Using unused bandwidth without permission is harmless enough but rather rude; competing with the legitimate owner for bandwidth is theft.
Secure your router and it shouldn't be much of an issue. There isn't any perfect security but intention to secure is demonstrated even by the presence of a WEP key. Leave it wide open and don't expect a lot of sympathy if freeloaders make your activity lights dance.
Free access isn't necessarily benign, either. Some idiot threatens to assassinate the President over your router and whose IP addy comes popping up on the Secret Service list? There's a way to prove you're innocent if you're logging the right stuff and know where to look for it but how many private owners bother?
There are are thousands of transmissions passing near/through/by you at any moment, it doesn't mean you have rights to intercept and respond.
Do you transmit on Police frequencies? Do you transmit to Air traffic control? Do You transmit to military bases?
No? Why not?
Because you are not authorized to do so. Just because you receive a transmission doesn't give you the right to TRANSMIT in response.
Maybe the guy picked a poor example.
Utilizing a restaurant's wi-fi is sort of like stopping in to using their restroom. They can stop you if they want to, but they usually don't. When you wash your hands or flush the toilet, you reduce they water pressure that can be delivered to their dishwashers, but it's usually so insignificant that the dishwashers will keep working just as they would have if you hadn't stopped by. In fact restroom use does have a small paper and maybe maintenance cost to the restaurant. I wonder if you consider that stealing. These costs have no analog associated with the drive-by wi-fiers.
ML/NJ
I wasn’t talking FCC regs. They are what they are.
I was talking ethics and more specifically the limited usefulness of analogies.
So theoretically, I could listen in on my neighbor’s wireless phone calls if I could figure out how to do it. In the old days, scanners could pick them up.
I don’t think I like the idea of having to board up my windows so that people cannot peep in and watch my TV. ;)
I pay for my service. I do not think it is ok for someone to steal it. If someone wants the service they should also pay for it.
Yes, my stuff is protected, but ... well, dunno... the thinking that it deserves to be stolen is not to my way of thinking. I grew up in a time that no one locked their houses or their cars. And when our moms sent us to the store, we left our bikes outside. No one ever, ever, thought that it deserved to be stolen.
Different times we live in, huh?
Anyone who references Pixies lyrics at Free Republic wins bonus points in my book. ;)
On the other side of things, it is perfectly legal to capture traffic on your wide open WLAN and it is also legal to access (or ‘monitor’) any computer accessing your private WLAN unless you publish a public privacy policy of some sort.
Come on! You're being silly. Transmitting on a ATC frequency makes that frequency unusable for its intended purpose for the entire time (plus a bit) during such a transmission. Drive-by wi-fiers checking their email do no such thing.
ML/NJ
You, him, are the future, and as always, only more to go.
The illegal user is transmitting to the receiver portion of the router and issuing commands for action- open the port, send my packet, when you get the return data for my packet, route it to me, not to the guy who paid for the connection and the router.
..But they do own their signal. And they own the equipment (wireless router) that you are using to access the internet.
So if it's okay for you to have unauthorized use of someone else's router, why shouldn't they have unauthorized use of the contents of your house?
A much-overlooked technical point with this issue:
For one to “piggyback”, “borrow”, “steal” etc. an open Wi-Fi connection, the conversation between the computer and the router goes something like this:
Router: “Hey everybody, there’s an active Wi-Fi router available named ‘linksys’ and it does not require a key to access!”
Laptop: “Hey, neat - can I connect?”
Router: “Sure!”
Laptop: “I don’t have a suitable IP address. Would you please give me one?”
Router: “Sure! Here, use 192.168.1.13!”
Laptop: “Great. Now, could you send this packet to www.google.com?”
Router: “Be happy to.”
...
Got that? The router:
- yells to everyone in radio earshot that the connection exists, is open, and is unlocked.
- hands out IP addresses to anyone who asks.
The real-world analogy might be: A building’s doorman periodically shouts “this door is open!” and hands a personalized nametag to anyone who asks to enter. It’s not just that the door is open and entrants are unchallenged, it’s that the door’s openness is actively advertised as such, and that instead of nobody challenging entrance or asking for ID, visitor ID tags are freely handed out.
Don’t want people to enter? Turn off “broadcast SSID” and require a WEP key - to wit: stop inviting people in and handing out visitor tags.
Not since Sheryl Crow set me straight..
It’s an odd beach, Free Republic. All sorts wash a shore.
Heck, theoretically you could chime in on the conversations. (I refuse to admit I’m old enough to remember party lines. That was way before I was born. Decades. Eons. Well, OK, but we only had the one (sob!))
That goes without saying....or at least it did until you said it.
I'm not anticipating a roving band of hackers to come through the neighborhood and start using my connection.
I guess I didn't make my point clearly enough so here we go again.
Too many people do not take ordinary care of their connections. Why make it easy?
I know hackers can always find a way, but why lay out a welcome mat for everybody and everybody's dog to glom onto your hookup by skipping the security features altogether?
Not since Sheryl Crow set me straight..
WEP and WPA keys are easy to break. Fortunately, there is enough free WiFi floating around that there is not real purpose in cracking the keys on a home network. Some uber nerds do it for fun, but by in large there isn’t anything there of interest.
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