Crowded WiFi Neighbourhood

For the same reason these aps are open, is the same reasons phishing emails work. Alot of people are simply  ignorant to the dangers they put themselves in and just don’t understand tech.

This will only get worse as iot exponentially grows.

About 12 months ago, I saw many examples of this around my area, so I contacted the village newsletter and highlighted it. Between myself and the editor, we produced a guide detailing what to do. Unfortunately, the newsletter ‘forgot’ my instruction not to give my name. I received a lot of thank you calls and two examples of why I did not want my name in print. One badly-spelled note through the letterbox and one call, both requesting in similar terms that I mind my own business.

The note was a big mistake, by certain details in the horrible wording, it was obviously someone I knew and it contained obscenities. I contacted the police and they paid him a visit. The phone call was from someone in a large house who had once asked my help with a problem. I was tempted to operate their printer, but resisted and simply went round and demonstrated what could happen. He apologised, thanked me profusely and offered to pay me to put it right. I sent my huge No.2 gson round instead, for some pocket money. I still see some examples of this, occasionally the newsletter reprints the article (minus my name) and headlines it. You can’t help some people, they see advice as an attack on their lack of knowledge.

Even using WPA2-PSK you need a 64 hex character key to minimise the risk from rainbow table attacks (GRC generator).  A few worldly wise people I know just leave their network wide open as they reckon it would be a lot easier to show no security than demonstrate that someone using rainbow tables and enough time had hacked into their system. Twisted logic I know, but I can see where they are coming from! (This is illegal in Germany as it stuffs up monitoring by their security services.)

Mine all called silly name. My main ones are CID listing van, GCHQ snooper, NSA detector, The Borg,  kids, and Guest.

I also have a host of stuff that gives off ap signal, my light bulbs, and the roku’s  I can’t seem to change any passwords for (or see a pw) . So I suppose they are open to an attack. But if that person could find their way onto my network via any of them, I’m sure they would have the knowledge to  brute force the main APs. So I’m not to concerned.

I was only wanting to know if there were many WiFi spots that were open in my area. I appears there are very few if any; deeper diving might be a good idea as a mental exercise but it is not one I need for the moment. There are too many other issues which are far from stimulating, but cut the day into many different often useless bits of time.

I dunno – I’m temped to to try and add an open network and then install Upside-Down-Ternet.

I think if it was just me, then I might change the internet over, but dealing with the fallout after I change it once the girlfriend has connected means it’s easier to leave it as it is :whistle: That, and I forget how many devices connect to the Wi-Fi and need setting up again!

I’ve not checked the local wifi to see what channels people are on – the wifi seems to work OK on our phones etc so I’ve not yet needed to investigate speeds.

I think Drezha was thinking of DONATING surplus access. I never consider I am stealing access if I use an open wifi link, neither do I abuse it as bandwidth is in any case restricted.

Ed P wrote:

I think Drezha was thinking of DONATING surplus access. I never consider I am stealing access if I use an open wifi link, neither do I abuse it as bandwidth is in any case restricted.

Yeah – I would find it amusing. However, the only reason I’d consider it is because it’s almost copy and paste – I wouldn’t do it myself from scratch. And I can’t do it anyhow, as my router doesn’t have a guest network, so it’s on the “I’d find it amusing” list but to much effort.

If you join BT Wifi (probably any FON) you agree to making your access point into a BT Wifi point which is restricted to other BT or FON users. In return you get access to all similar access points. The free BT wifi coverage is therefore quite extensive in city areas. link. This used to be BT Fon with the FON bit having international links – I’m not too sure of their relationship with international FON now, but I think it still works.