Man Charged With Stealing Wi-Fi Signal

Interesting story about guy charged for stealing while sitting in his SUV

[christopher w]

Full story here [news.yahoo.com]

[lgn1]

Well, if people are to stupid to turn on encryption or use passwords, then they should consider their network a public access port.

There must be something more to this than the story mentions, for the arrest to occur.

[MatthewHSE]

It's these Wi-Fi theives that have deterred me from setting up a wireless network. From what I've read, even a good passwords and encryption setup isn't proof against someone breaking in.

[vincevincevince]

I've often thought that if you could do a revenue share scheme to allow access to private wifi internet, anywhere, you'd be rich.

Imagine a typical residential area. No public hotspots there. If you can do a revenue share with the wifi users in the road, hey presto, three or four hotspots in every road in the country.

Single billing system with revenue share between you and the residential internet user.

[mcavic]

if people are to stupid to turn on encryption

While I might agree, it's definitely a gray area in terms of legality. For example, breaking and entering is still a crime even if the front door is unlocked.

The real problem isn't even intentional stealing, but accidental. I'm in an apartment building with 11 units. There are 5 wireless networks including mine, 3 of them are unsecured, and 1 is called "linksys".

So, if someone else sets up a new linksys router and a workstation, the workstation will most likely make a random choice on which router to connect to.

Another problem is computer stores selling those "Wi-Fi detectors". It makes stealing signal seem okay.

encryption setup isn't proof against someone breaking in

The encryption is still technically crackable. But my guess is that the benefit would be too small for someone to bother. Your secure web sites go through a separate layer of SSL encryption, so they'd have to crack it twice to get any useful data.

[mcavic]

Here's a thought, though. If someone is connected to your wireless LAN, they can potentially connect to your shared drives and transfer files.

So, if you use file sharing, make sure that each shared drive is password protected. If you have any Windows XP Home machines, make sure they don't have any drives shared -- because you can't password protect a shared drive in Home (someone should be shot).

[catch2948]

LOL ... Someone busted for something I do regularly (in a matter of speaking) ...

Whenever I travel to New York City, I always stay in the same hotel, which charges $19.99 per day for broadband access ... However, directly across the street, there is a Starbucks (eg. T-Mobile wireless) ... I always use the Starbucks connect instead of paying $19.95 a day ... But then again, I have a T-Mobile account ... So I'm not sure if that is really stealing or not ... Damn ... Legal stuff always gets me confused