Two people have been arrested and cautioned for using someone else’s wireless Internet connection without permission, known as “piggy-backing,” police said on Wednesday.
On Saturday, a man was arrested after neighbors spotted him sitting in a car outside a home in Redditch, Worcestershire, using a laptop computer to browse the Internet.
A 29-year-old woman was also arrested in a car in a similar incident in the same area last month. Both received an official caution, a formal warning one step short of prosecution, for “dishonestly obtaining electronic communications services with intent to avoid payment.”
They were among the first to be arrested for piggy-backing in Britain.
The UK ain’t especially different from the US. No patch for stupidity. Up to a quarter or more of home wireless connections there are unsecured. Same for business wi-fi.
The last arrest like this in my neck of the woods was thrown out – when the business owner testified he told people he left the system open 24/7 so people without internet access could log on.
My brother arrested a kid for doing this one night after a person saw a suspicious car parked outside for a long time. He said the court found him guilty but I forgot what the charges were.
I was in Paris at a friend’s place a couple years ago and she had half a dozen totally open wifi nodes for me to use.
I asked her about it — she said that internet connection is considered a public service and is priced very cheaply — so people just keep their connections open since it’s not considered a premium thing to be guarded.
The end-effect is that the city is blanketed with free wifi. It’s a sweet deal and very progressive.
What I’ve been doing, ever since (think second last TechTV ScreenSaver ep), is using MAC address filtering and disabling the SSID broadcast.
It works wonderfully well.
At a friends house last weekend, where she had bought a wifi and installed herself, there was a teen using her bandwidth. I had told her to get a 7dbi booster antenna as she was having problems.
So she had a piggy-backer, dense populated area.
I put the MAC filtering for just her computers, but left the broadcast on, and no WAP.
Now the piggy-backer will have a wonderful time debugging why he’s to see an “open” wifi but doesn’t get a IP address.
Even if he manually puts one in the proper range and sets up manually the connection, the MAC filtering blocks him.
#3: That works, until you get someone (or that same person does a quick search on the internet) that can spoof mac addresses. Disabling the SSID works alright, but if someone knows your SSID then its useless
3. I do the same thing but I still use WAP. 2X the protection!
I do think piggybacking is immoral, but, oh, come on… if one doesn’t want to share his internet access, one must lock down his wifi router access, just like I had mine before switching to a 3G access. Doesn’t the police have more serious crimes to fight other than protect wifi router owners from their own ignorance?
It is a matter of ignorance and carelessness… I mean, you don’t need to be a genious to have the following train of thought:
– This works with radio.
– Radio crosses walls inside the house, so possibly it will cross the outside walls as well.
– If it crosses the outside walls, then maybe someone might use my internet access.
– Oh, my God, what can I do about it? RTFM!!! Yes, Read The Fuckin’ Manual!
Last, if router owners are so uncapable of RTFMing, call a friend who can help or hire a computer guy. But, for crying out loud, making a police matter out of something which is so easily avoidable is simply nuts. There are really dangerous criminals out there, you know?
#5, Me too… And a good router is so easy to configure. 🙂
Wireless access was designed for sharing. You are broadcasting and receiving a radio signal. I don’t see why we need another reason to put people in prison and clog up the courts because people want reality realigned for their convenience.
New Rule: if you want to share, use wireless.
If you don’t want to share, use cables.
I only use wireless when I’m traveling. And then only the publicly available stuff. Wireless is too much hassle for just surfing the web, and putting a wireless card in a desktop is just plain dumb unless It’s in a remote location you can’t run a wire to. The difference between a theoretical 100Mbps and 54Mbps is only attenuated by distance. Whereas you could run a cat 5e the length of a football field (100 meters, to be exact) with no attenuation in the signal.
What is interesting, is that with an OPEN network…
And everyone DOING IT…Could they trace WHAT you had done, or your DL’s??
My other comment goes like THIS:
IF you are stupid enough to THINK wireless is so NEET, then LEARN to use it and LOCK it down.
You cant blame ME, for useing your bandwidth, IF you leave it unlocked.
You can mac filter and disable SSID, but that won’t keep hackers out. A little packet sniffing, and a determined hacker is in.
Instead, enable WPA on the wireless router and use a 63 byte password from:
https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm
There’s not enough compute power to hack this technique (at present).
So… personal responsibility doesnt apply? If Joe Blow is a dumbass and doesnt secure wireless access properly, its his own damn fault – #11’s suggestion is a good one, WPA is da bomb
11 – Useful link, thanks
Anyone seriously interested in cryptography can start here at episode 31 and continue on for a few episodes. Not much math required. Right click link below and ‘save as’ if you like (or don’t have QuickTime plugin). Podcasts are about 30-45 minutes long. [Good discussion of the RFID virus, also.]
http://media.grc.com/sn/SN-031.mp3
Main page is here, so you can see more crypto episodes. Enjoy:
http://www.grc.com/SecurityNow.htm
I keep our small office wireless network locked down, and had a lady try to use it the other day and complain because her laptop couldn’t access the internet. She’d just bought her computer, and apparently somebody told her (salesperson?) that wireless coverage was universal. She seemed a bit miffed when I didn’t offer to open up the network just for her.
Addendum: If your wireless router only supports WEP, it can now be cracked in just under 1 minute. Better upgrade that hardware.