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Do you steal wireless internet?
JoyMonkey:
Recently I visited a friend and was surprised to find that he was 'stealing' a wireless internet connection from a neighbour. I knew this was possible, it just surprised me because he's the most honest person on the planet.
For the last few days my DSL connection speed has gone down the shitter. I called Verizon and they're sending someone out (probably to replace my ancient DSL modem), so in the mean-time I thought I'd try grabbing a connection from a neighbour. I plugged in an old USB adapter and found 5 unsecured wireless networks around me! Five! Out of eight! I've got a slow Wireless-B adapter, but it runs faster than my current crippled connection so I'm happy, and I don't feel that I'm doing anything wrong since everyone around me is using the same ISP.
Now I'm wondering why DSL routers are factory set to 'unsecure' modes. Would it be that hard to have an initial setup program that gave the router a password? My neighbours probably have no idea that anyone has access to their internet. If I was an uber-geek I could probably get into all their shared documents and god knows what else.
PS. If you live on my block and have a wireless router called 'NetGear', sorry.
TheTick:
I know Comcast's TOS (term of service) prohibts sharing. Of course its unintentional, but would be funny if someone gets their contract terminated.
I wound up locking my network down when I got my new laptop. Out of ten WLANs, I was one of 8 that was insecure :-[ My stupid Buffalo gateway/repeater never worked right with security enabled. Glad I dumped that and the ReplayTV it was connected too.
ChadTower:
Of course, someone like me periodically checks the list of leases in my router's logs, and would wipe the machine of someone found on my network.
Seriously, they dont' have to be encrypted, all they have to do is change the SSID and not broadcast it. You'd never find that network.
RayB:
In some ways, it should all be shared freely. What a better world we'd live in. No? ;)
When we first got our laptop, it had built-in wireless and I didn't have wireless yet. So what I did was scan for a network and sure enough found one that was "open to the public". Upon connection I was instantly hit with a couple trojan horse viruses.
That was the last time I ever connected to someone else's network.
GGKoul:
I do.. but afterwards I tell the neighbour that he should change the default router settings.