WiFi Piggybacking
Dec. 17th, 2007 11:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackofallgeeksSo there's short
article on WirelessWeekly.com which claims that 54% of wireless users
admit to having used someone else's wireless access at some point, a
practice often referred to as piggybacking. The article calls this use
'stealing' and lumps piggybackers under the heading of "cybercriminals"
along with identity thieves, phishers, malicious hackers, spyware vendors,
et cetera.
Now, I'm not one to generally condone a tyranny of the majority, but you
have to wonder about the validity of a law that would criminalize more than
half the population. (Sure, duels to the death were once legal, and we all
know killing of any kind is wrong...) But more than that, as noted in the
Techdirt
cover article, you have to be careful about what you call crime. If they
had to crack your security -- a password or encryption or something, they
yes, that's a crime; cracking security measures is a crime. If they riffled
through your documents, or installed software on your machine, yes, that's a
crime; invasion of another person's computer is a crime. But if the only
'crime' they've committed is using a wireless access point that was left
open and broadcasting... that's not really a crime.
I'm about to get really fast internet access at home, on the order of
5x faster than anything I've had before. And I have every intention of
setting it up so that passersby can hop a ride on my connection if they need
it -- I'll be careful to have it properly isolated from my personal
computer, and I'll throttle it so that they can't impinge on the bandwidth I
plan to use myself, but it'll be there, intentionally open for public
use. The argument seems to be, "you didn't pay for it, so you're
stealing if you're taking it. But I disagree. In my case, it's *intended*
to be open for use; what's to differentiate my open WiFi access point from
any others? It's that's NOT what you want, if you want people to stay off
your network, even WEP is enough to "keep honest men honest."
There have been a lot of times when me or my friends, being strangers in a
foreign land or neighbors waiting for the ISP to send a technician out,
would have appreciated an open access point to get directions or check
email. For my part, I see nothing wrong* with offering that to others.
*The caveat being, obviously, that if someone is piggybacking on your
network to perform illegal activities, that inclines one to shut the whole
thing down. Ideally, I would set up a firewall/proxy to filter
outgoing traffic on the open access point, to make sure nothing bad
is going out from my network. That's called being a good neighbor (to the
Internet). That's not always possible for people, but like i said, even WEP
is enough to keep honest men honest, and then if they're on your network it
IS a crime.
article on WirelessWeekly.com which claims that 54% of wireless users
admit to having used someone else's wireless access at some point, a
practice often referred to as piggybacking. The article calls this use
'stealing' and lumps piggybackers under the heading of "cybercriminals"
along with identity thieves, phishers, malicious hackers, spyware vendors,
et cetera.
Now, I'm not one to generally condone a tyranny of the majority, but you
have to wonder about the validity of a law that would criminalize more than
half the population. (Sure, duels to the death were once legal, and we all
know killing of any kind is wrong...) But more than that, as noted in the
Techdirt
cover article, you have to be careful about what you call crime. If they
had to crack your security -- a password or encryption or something, they
yes, that's a crime; cracking security measures is a crime. If they riffled
through your documents, or installed software on your machine, yes, that's a
crime; invasion of another person's computer is a crime. But if the only
'crime' they've committed is using a wireless access point that was left
open and broadcasting... that's not really a crime.
I'm about to get really fast internet access at home, on the order of
5x faster than anything I've had before. And I have every intention of
setting it up so that passersby can hop a ride on my connection if they need
it -- I'll be careful to have it properly isolated from my personal
computer, and I'll throttle it so that they can't impinge on the bandwidth I
plan to use myself, but it'll be there, intentionally open for public
use. The argument seems to be, "you didn't pay for it, so you're
stealing if you're taking it. But I disagree. In my case, it's *intended*
to be open for use; what's to differentiate my open WiFi access point from
any others? It's that's NOT what you want, if you want people to stay off
your network, even WEP is enough to "keep honest men honest."
There have been a lot of times when me or my friends, being strangers in a
foreign land or neighbors waiting for the ISP to send a technician out,
would have appreciated an open access point to get directions or check
email. For my part, I see nothing wrong* with offering that to others.
*The caveat being, obviously, that if someone is piggybacking on your
network to perform illegal activities, that inclines one to shut the whole
thing down. Ideally, I would set up a firewall/proxy to filter
outgoing traffic on the open access point, to make sure nothing bad
is going out from my network. That's called being a good neighbor (to the
Internet). That's not always possible for people, but like i said, even WEP
is enough to keep honest men honest, and then if they're on your network it
IS a crime.
