Man in Florida arrested who was using unauthorized Wi-Fi - Page 18

here, here

I did't go thru all the posts. But people really don't protect their wireless networks! I live in a college town and my laptop can pick up a bunch of unprotected signals with a lot of cute network names on it.

Its a no brainer! Is it yours? If the answer is NO, And you take/use it without the owners permission then it is wrong. No matter how you try to argue it. BTW, same thing for cable tv, I work for a local cable provider and alot of people think that just cause the have unlawful carnal knowledge of how the "system" works this entitles them to free service, AGAIN.. Is it yours?

omg be careful man! common sense, ethics, morals, right/wrong are almost extinct in this thread...

justification of stealin', etc. are the popular things...

no, really man, it's refreshin' to here someone else express firm, black and white, right and wrong rules...

welcome

Don't know if this has beeen posted, but one town believes it is the responsibility of the person with the network to encrypt it. At least this is what the county is pushing at a business level.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12412271/

Its still black & white. The more your argue it, the more defined it becomes.
Parents that tell thier kids to lie about thier age at the buffet so they can pay a reduced price, have kids that grow up to be dishonest. If someone is going to steal bandwidth, knowning its wrong, And you defend them? Let them be your neighbors NOT MINE.

Theft is never right

Well, when you do something you know is wrong... thats what happens. It may not happen rigt away, but you'll get cought soon enough.

but its not like the person is paying per use.. they pay one set amount for an unlimited amount of bandwith so it is really causing no harm what so ever and for the most part goes unnoticed by anyone...i mean yes technically its stealing but its comparable to stealing grass from stealing grass from someones yard. yes theres a part missing and could be noticable but it will grow back with no harm to anyone

Damn thats crazy

Even if you're knowingly using someone else's unencrypted Wi-Fi signal from within your own home, how likely is it that you'll ever get caught in the first place unless you're doing something seriously illegal like hacking a NASA web server from your neighbour's connection? People here have been talking about a few cases where someone has been caught in line of sight outside someone's building, but somehow I don't think that's where most of these 'offences' are being committed...

Just going through several blocks of apartments (or more if you're using a signal booster like Super Cantenna) and entering people's homes in order to check their computer equipment would demand a whole lot of search warrants and manpower, and for what? For some guy that couldn't even bother to configure his wireless router and is simply angry that someone is abusing that situation?

Even if you're doing some not too high profile illegal activities (like keeping a warez server), if all they have on you is a MAC address or similair, unless that computer data can somehow be pinpointed to you through some computer sales register (not likely if bought over the counter or second hand), then they are pretty much out of luck with the possible exception if you've done some personal activities through that guy's connection (reading private mail, logging on to your internet bank account etc) in which case his ISP could reveal which sites you've visited to the police and the police could request information about you from these sites...

So, I'd say that as long as you don't commit any high profile criminal activities nor visit any web sites which can tell the ISP/police your real identity then you are pretty much safe. Another thing about not visiting any private sites through someone else's WiFi connection is that that guy may not be such a dumbass as you think he is. He could in fact purposely keep an open and unencrypted connection and install a traffic sniffer in order to get peoples personal data like credit card numbers, passwords etc. While most of these things normally use encrypted HTTPS connections you never know what might leak out, especially considering that all traffic goes through his router. So you may be the one that ends up getting screwed

You teach your kids that its ok to steal? It doesnt matter if its a victimless crime or not. If someone pays a set amount for a service and they arent currently using it, you still do not have a right to take it. Its not a question of will you get caught or not, it a matter of "If not yours, dont take it IT!"

How many people admit that its wrong, still do it, and defend themselves for doing it.

I work for a local cable company. I do mostly install work. I have all access to all secure parts of cable tv. internet, and telephony. I am the one that has all the equipment to bring high def cable tv, high speed internet, telephone to your house. I know ALL the tricks. I pay over $200/month for services that if I were dishonest I would have for free.

I cant tell you how many people that I have disconnected knowing they are stealing cable and right after I leave they are climbing back up the pole, breaking the lock seal and stealing cable again. WHen confronted they act stupid like its ok to steal. How many stories I have heard about people harming themselves trying to steal, only to blame the cable company or other utility companies.
Be sure to claim your the victim when you get caught, shot, or harm yourself while trying to steal something that wasnt yours in the first place.

Here's an interesting situation that happened to me this very morning...

Let's say you have a router with SSID "My WLAN router" and because of some configuration issue you have to revert to the default factory settings which have the SSID "Default". You also receive a weaker signal from some nearby neighbour that keeps an unencrypted connection with the same default SSID "Default"...

Because the signal from your router is stronger than your neighbour's and because of the identical SSID's, XP will only show your "Default" router while your neighbour's "Default" router won't appear. Now you connect to your own "Default" router by double clicking on it and reconfigure it again with your SSID of choice "My WLAN router" and click on apply...

What happens now is that when you're disconnected from your unencrypted "Default" router connection Windows XP automatically reconnects you, however not to your own router with the updated SSID "My WLAN router" but to the weaker signal of your neighbour's router with the same SSID "Default" that your router had before you were disconnected from it due to the configuration update...

I was perplexed by the fact that my router refused to register the SSID change as well as by the fact that I couldn't log into my router's web interface until I finally realized that the reason for this was that Windows XP "reconnected" me not to my own router but to the weaker signal of my neighbour's router. And this despite the fact that "My WLAN router" is the preferred network to which it should automatically connect and also the network with the stronger signal. It seems like Windows XP sees the break of connection when the router is reinitializing as some temporary signal loss and starts looking for the "Default" router again automatically...

Technically I guess a crime was commited, but the question is who the perpetrator was, me or Windows XP? I can't say I feel like a criminal though

interesting, that's one reason i use a wired connection and chg the settings on my router first - no doubt about which router i'm updating... then i chg the settings on my notebooks...

but i never understand why ppl look for an SSID when they're gonna be using their own connection... i KNOW what my SSID is and it's NOT broadcast... the only way i could see it is if i have Windows and my crappy ole Intel 2915abg card configured correctly lol

btw, i use a complicated SSID and don't broadcast it, i use MAC filtering so only the devices i want can even connect and i use WPA-PSK with TKIP... seems to work well enough...

sure it can be broken but as many of us have said before about home security systems, you just need to make it tough enough that any thieves will move on to an easier target...

I don't broadcast the SSID either, unless I'm in the midst of some router configuration change like the one I described above. I also use WPA-PSK but with AES which supposedly is better than TKIP but not available on older routers. I also use MAC filtering for router access and for whatever it's worth I've also disabled the DHCP server and set one static IP adress for each computer's MAC address, so as far as safety is concerned I'm pretty much set, well, except for maybe having WPA2

exactly, you've made any thief have to go to some trouble to steal from you so he'll just move on down the line to an easier target

that's the real irony here, all of us know (or think we do lol) what we're doing with Wi-Fi so we can protect ourselves... it's the ignorant masses that need protectin'...

To the cable guy in this thread:

You're taking a juvenile standpoint here, and tremendously abusing the definitions of values such as honesty. Moreover, you're being super American about it. You wanna talk about stealing, mr. cable guy? You work for a cable company, how can you live with yourself knowing that your parent company does heinous things like gouge customers and charge them insane amounts for basic services, ignore service requests, provide TERRIBLE SERVICE THAT ALWAYS CUTS OUT, and to top it off, never gives refunds. Think about it good sir, every time a paying customer does not get what he deserves your company robs him. Who raised the people that run your company? Were they not taught the proper values you so described? Yet you work for them, why don't you stop Mr. Honest?...oh you don't care, you're not doing anything wrong.

Idiot. "Stealing" wireless. It has no impact on the person that's getting "robbed." The "thieves" often have no frigging idea what's going on. This case is ludicrous.

America in a nutshell right here. How about instead of trying to pretend like it's an injustice for someone to log into our routers we at least admit we are crazy and feel violated and want personal justice.

not really... there's a Latin phrase that lawyers wish they could use far more often "de minimis non curat lex" which translates to "the law does not care for small things" or "the law does not deal with trifles"...

a good example is a battery - touching w/o permission (btw, it's NOT an assault which has nothing to do with actually touching someone as most ppl believe)... people bumping into each other at a crowded place, an obvious battery but meaningless... the courts are too full now if we allowed crap like that to be brought the system would totally stop...

I feel this thread is about honesty. If you know its "stealing" and admit its "stealing" and continue to do so. Im sorry dude.. your "STEALING" acting like it ok may make YOU feel like its ok.

""Idiot. "Stealing" wireless. It has no impact on the person that's getting "robbed." ""(whats your SSID?, I bet I can make an impact)

""How about instead of trying to pretend like it's an injustice for someone to log into our routers we at least admit we are crazy and feel violated and want personal justice. ""(That I agree with)

You can only take responsibility for your own actions. Please dont be dishonest. These things have a way of coming back on you.

Im sorry if you feel your getting bad serive from your local cable provider. I can only tell you about the job I perform. I hope that people feel that , I, NOT only solved their problem, but provided 5 minutes of education. Heres yours:
Cable is a service, you have a choice not to subscribe. There ARE other alternatives. If you feel that you were treated unfairly contact your local cable board, (city management). When I did service calls 75% were at the fault of the customer, ie bad wiring inside the house, signal splitters from radio shack (bad!), Wal-Mart coax wire RG-59 (BAD!). What happens when a service tech comes out and spends 2 hours climbing through an attic (on knees and elbows) to isolate, locate, fix, the above problems, then bills you, are you gonna pay the $75 hour service charge? (EVEN WORSE!) I hope none of these fall onto anyone here.
I hear that other cable companies send little gremlins out into homes to tear wiring up just to keep techs busy and charge the end customer heaps of money.
If your problem is a cable line issue, I can assure you, you wont be the only one having that problem. All your neighbors will too (unless they were visited by the same gremlins)

There are lots of places that offer free wifi services to the public or customers. I use them. I have also seen companies that offer these services. (for a fee) The original thread was about someone wardriving (purpose intent to unlawfully access a wireless access point) I dont think its a very BIG issue with the current price of gas. Be cheaper to just say at home and pay for the service yourself. Economics works.

lol "unauthorized"...since when do people get to broadcast stuff into the open and public,,,but then unauthorize them not to use it so they get arrested. FawekD UP.

and plus....if it were my laptop it would of picked the signal up automatically without me even knowing......>i would get arrested?>>>>>> this world is messed up seroiously.