In Illinois, riding piggyback on someone else’s Wi-Fi could cost you some money.
David M. Kauchak, 32, pleaded guilty this week in Winnebago County to remotely accessing someone else’s computer system without permission, the Rockford Register Star newspaper reported. A Winnebago County judge fined Kauchak $250 and sentenced him to one year of court supervision.
“We just want to get the word out that it is a crime. We are prosecuting it, and people need to take precautions,” Assistant State’s Attorney Tom Wartowski told the newspaper.
John has written about this type of situation previously.
So what’s the consensus: Should it really be a crime to use an open Wi-Fi connection?
Umm … you leave your access point open, you have no right to complain when people use it …
Wrong, Bruce. By your logic, when you leave your front door open, you have no right to complain if anyone comes in and uses your home.
Connecting to an open WiFi access point may not be illegal. Using the internet connection on the other end however, is.
Theft of services is a crime regardless of the means used to connect to said service. You have absolutely no right to use the internet connection without express consent.
“By your logic, when you leave your front door open, you have no right to complain if anyone comes in and uses your home.”
That’s not even remotely analogous. The guy was not on the person’s property. He was on a public street. The alleged “victim’s” connection was in a public area and was completely accessible.
If the guy wants protection over his “service” he should either make sure it never leaves his property or makes sure it’s locked up when it does. Once it leaves his property as an open connection, it should be treated as public domain.
Ask yourself this: What if your neighbor leaves his water running and it trickles into your yard. You then use it to water your garden. Is that a crime? Aren’t you stealing his service?
Wrong, Malren! Leaving your access point open is NOT like leaving your front door open, as you aren’t tresspassing on someone’s property. Nice try though 😉 If I choose to check off “open” on my access point, and I don’t want anyone to use it then shame on me. It’s time people take accountibility for the actions they take. Wake up people! Don’t the courts have enough frivolous lawsuits in progress?
It’s bizarre how next to no one seems to have any understanding of what’s going on with wireless access points.
The simple fact of the matter is that unsecured access points are LITERALLY yelling at the tops of their lungs: “HEY ANYONE WHO CAN HEAR ME IS WELCOME TO CONNECT TO ME”.
Unsecured wireless access points are LITERALLY seeking connections – ACTIVELY.
It’s asinine that someone taking the AP up on its offer could be convicted of anything.
People who don’t secure their APs are idiots – plain and simple (unless they intend to share of course).
I would have to agree with SN. There is no comparison between entering someone’s house, which is private properity, and using someone’s internet access. Apples and oranges.
so, the cops and State’s Attorneys in Winnebago County don’t have anything _else_ to do? and I agree – the analogy with the open front door is inapt. leaving your wi-fi open is more like putting your big-screen TV in your front lawn, turning it on HBO, then prosecuting people who drive up and look at it for stealing cable services.
The relationship is that your router is broadcasting, and your PC is receiving. Once your PC locates the broadcasting router, you’ve got Internet access. It seems like a grey legal area as the router isn’t also broadcasting a message that says “Hey! I’m paying ofr this access, so if I didn’ t ask you to use it, go away!”
My router is open. Feel free to pull up on my street and access the Internet.
A wifi signal is a radio broadcast. Is it illegal to listen to FM? The congress and our courts need to learn a little about radio science, if You BROADCAST what right do you have to complain (and what idiot government do we have not to understand this) If you yell out load and people hear you did they break the law?? We live in a sorry country if this is considered questionable. Carefull what you hear………..
Maybe this poor fella should counter-sue, after all, those WiFi signals were straying on to his property and invading his space…
I hope people that access these unsecured WIFI access points realize that there are also people who set up open access points simply to use them for DataMining any traffic that flows through them.
You would be amazed what can be found out be monitoring the internet trafffic flowing through an open acess point..
Also some people may even be setting up open access points as honeypots to draw in people to actively attack anyone foolish enough to associate with an open access point. Unless the person using the access point has taken the nessecary steps to properly secure his own system they may find themselves getting more than free WIFI from some open access points.
So legal or not, I would never connect to an open wireless access point because you never know who is running it. Perhaps most times it is some clueless individual but there could also be somebody who knows more than you do who is just leaving some bait in a trap.
I don’t understand why there hasn’t been an easy answer to this problem. All the damn broadcast flag proposals out there and no one can come up with a flag for Access Points to tell the world they are knowingly allowing anyone to connect?
Also, I don’t understand why Routers aren’t set up to allow two classes of connections. One, which has full access to the local network and the internet (secured) and an unsecured one with lower bandwidth with internet access only (with the flag mentioned above).
If such a setup was commonly available, I believe more people would allow public use of their connection. I know “War Driving” has saved my butt a couple of times when I needed a driver right away and had no local internet access.
I didn’t read all the comments. Sorry, I’m lazy.
Anyway, as far as the open access point-open door analogy, don’t get nit-picky about whether or not it was on private property. The guy could have done the same thing from his house if his neighbor had left the connection open. Where the crime is committed isn’t as important as the fact that the crime was committed.
If you really need a better example, leave your car door unlocked with the keys in it. It might not be the brightest idea in the world, but it’s still a crime (and you’re still gonna be pretty pissed) if someone opens that door and uses your car. And the car could be in a driveway or public parking garage. A crime is a crime. Maybe people should protect their computers better, but just because someone is careless doesn’t mean it’s not a crime.
Alas, the link to the story is broken, but “remotely accessing someone else’s computer system without permission” sounds like {cr|h}acking to me. That’s something completely different from using someone else’s Internet connection (which may or may not be flat-rate) without permission.
I have an extra router sitting under the eve of the front porch acting as an access point – segmented from the rest of the network. It’s wide open.
I am paying for the access, and there is no way I could be using all of it all the time. I have never noticed a slow down. Most mac address are random and never show up again, except for two. I think someone figured out it’s always up and stable why get their own.
Big Biz needs to stop trying to make money on the access and come up with some rich services that we can’t live with out and will pay for.
JJ, the difference between music and internet is that you are listening to the music but you aren’t using whatever they are downloading. You payed for the music for personal use, and it costs nothing extra for more people to listen. However, with the internet it does cost extra for other people to download. Lets say you have an open connection and some jerk decides to download a copy of 10 different Linux distros and this bumps you over your bandwidth allowance. That costs you money. It’s more akin to someone tapping into your cable line and ordering PPV on their tv and making you foot the bill. It’s just a tad easier. Not all internet connections are all you can download. Infact, most aren’t.
Wow, not one of you addressed the real issue; You have no legal right to use the paid-for internet connection on the other end of an open wifi access point without express permission. That is theft of services.
malren – if the owner is broadcasting an open wifi signal through his router, he is not only giving you permission, he is INVITING you to use it. Note there was nothing in the article about the router owner contacting the police to complain about some sort of trespass on his connection.
The open door analogy is more-or-less correct. In order to access that network’s internet connection, the defendant had to access the plaintiff’s private network one way or another (in this case, via its wi-fi connection). This is tantamount to hacking, regardless if the “front door” is open or closed. If it was closed, this would be considered illegal hacking and few people would be commenting.
Granted, the plaintiff was an idiot opening their network to the general public — they were negligent in such security; but, whether they knew it was open or not is another issue entirely. Compensation for their potential loss of services should be seriously questioned. In the end, however, a property (ie. the plaintiff’s network) was broken into (irregardless of how easy it was) and the defendant should be penalized accordingly. I think the sentence was correct.
Actually, for a different spin on things. I had a customer once who was complaining about sometimes connecting, other times not. He said this had been going on for quite some time – I went to check it out. As it turns out, he had the WEP for his network typed in wrong, but he was picking up on the 802.11 next door, and using his neighbour’s connection without even realizing it. When his neighbour shut off the router for the night, customer lost his connection. The next day when he was going to call me – his connection was back, so he thought no more about it.
Point to my blurb (other than two guys who can’t troubleshoot wireless), according to many of the rulings I’m reading about, my customer would be just as guilty as David M. Kauchak, and have no idea at all why he was getting busted.
Although I think people should know a little more about what they are doing in the wireless world, I have also seen many people in my line of work that are too damn lazy to set things up correctly, and an open network is just easier for them to get in, get out, and get paid for.
addendum to my post …..
I never set my customer’s network up initially – he was talked into wireless by Sympatico for no reason apparently. He only has one computer, but they convinced him to throw away his Cat5, install a w/l NIC in his desktop, and buy the w/l router off them.
I did tell him it is a wise idea to have at least one computer hard-wired to a network, but I guess he didn’t want to believe me.
….. just so nobody was calling me a twit in here for setting up a network wrong. Feel free to call me a twit … just not for that 🙂
Here’s how I look at it. The Wi-Fi is a broadcast that is being received by someone’s computer. So I receive this signal and as long as I am not hacking into the other person’s computer and only using the internet connection, I am not doing anything illegal.
If anyone should be penalized, it should be the person broadcasting for allowing someone else to use the service without paying for it. Broadcasting a signal is different than someone physically entering a building or physically splicing a cable. That would be like me splicing the cable from inside that guy’s house, which he would at least be a party to committing a crime.
To whomever talked about going over their bandwith allowance, it would take a lot more than d/l 10 distros along with someone’s typical usage to go over that. Someone would need to be doing constant d/l and u/l. The typical user never gets close to their limit.
That’s my view at least.
agree with marz.
The dude in #13 is not me, but it’s scary that they posted pretty much what I was going to post.
Everyone is attacking the end user for leaving their AP open and calling them idiots. 98.23% of end users are not computer literate. They don’t know how to secure their APs or even that they can. Eitehr the end users or carriers should be pressureing the AP manufacturers to develop products that are more secure by default.
These people are not buying computers and don’t want to have to learn how to operate computers and networks. These people want to buy appliances. Plug it in, push a cuple of butons and you’re on the Internet.
Ever hear of theft-of-service?
Refer to the Cable Communication Policy Act of 1984 [47 C.F.R. 553(c)]. Comcast defines theft of service as
Period. Doesn’t matter whether you personally let someone else share out the signal, or you do it yourself. If someone walks onto your property, plugs their electrical equipment into your outlet and uses your electricity, that’s theft of service.
A building crew was stealing my electricity (I caught them red-handed) to use lighting on an unfinished house across the street from me. Where I live (in DE), it is a crime, and you can call the police.
Theft is theft.
The open door comparison is wrong. In order to access the door, one must trespass on the other’s property to reach the door. The same with keys in a car.
The analogy of the music is much more apt. If you stop and listen from the sidewalk, you are free to enjoy the music for as long as it plays. Or complain that it is too loud or is offensive. The same with any paint scheme, flower bed, or political sign. What ever leaves the house via light waves, sound waves, or radio waves comes into the public domain and the house owner has no control over who may view, hear, or access it.
Yes there are a lot of stupid people out there. That is simply because they do not have the aptitude to learn about modern computer technologies. We make cars safe to drive for stupid people, we process food safe to eat for stupid people, and we build houses safe for stupid people, so why not make computer technology safe for stupid people? Don’t blame those who can’t set up their routers. Blame the router that is very difficult to set up. Blame the guy that sold the unsuspecting consumer the router as in Bill’s example in #23.
The “thief” figured it was cheaper to settle then fight it. It would have cost much more then $250 for a lawyer and his own time off of work.
Dave
A couple of point you raised.
First, interception of cable services; didn’t happen. These were radio waves broadcast into the public domain. The offender didn’t enter the property, tamper with any part of the cable system, or physically touch the house owner or cable owner’s property. The cable was not involved and there was no communication taken from the cable line.
Second, you are quite right when someone enters your property and uses your services. First then must trespass, then they must tamper with the service (even if it is just plugging into a receptacle) to obtain the service. That is theft. If you notice though, that didn’t happen here.
If the home owner left a pile of money on the sidewalk, you find it, you own it. The home owner allowed the signal to land on public property, so it to is there for the taking.
We need to get this stuff shut down because stray Wi-Fi signals might be contributing to Global Warming.
There are two questions that come to my mind regarding this case specifically. First, did the access point’s owner knowingly set his access point up so that anyone can connect to it? If so, then no crime has been committed. If not, then he needs to learn a lot about network security, and, yes, a crime was committed.
This isn’t the same as music blaring across the street and my dancing to it serendipitously. In that case the music’s owner knows he is sharing his music with anyone who passes by. The router’s owner may not have known.
Although the unlocked front door is a good analogy, I’m not convinced that its the right one, but it is close. Instead, I would use the analogy of a cordless phone. If I install a cordless phone in my house (900 mhz, 100′ range) I expect to be able to use it anywhere in my house with reasonable privacy and for my own use. If my neighbor buys a phone that operates on the same frequency for the sole purpose of using my phone line without paying (and without my permission) that is theft of service.
Why? Well, I am the one paying the bill. If my neighbor racks up long distance charges or toll charges, they get charged back to me, not my neighbor. If my internet accessing neighbor goes to a site that wants to charge me for my connection or uses more bandwidth than I’ve contracted for, I am stuck paying the bill.
Does an open phone connection mean I’m sharing my phone line with the rest of the neighborhood? No. Neither should an open Internet connection unless I specifically say so in the SID.
One of my neighbors does have an open access point on his network. When you look for connections, it states “Roberts–open connection” (or something similar, I haven’t looked in a while) as the broadcast SID. He has his PCs firewalled so he can share files internally, but he shares his connection. If the police had stopped Mr. Kauchak outside my neighbor’s house and tried to arrest Mr. Kauchak they wouldn’t have legal grounds. Anywhere else, well, that’s what local laws are for, to define what is and what isn’t allowable.
Gary