4 ms·

I'm not going to guess the foibles of law, especially the British courts. But the intention of accessing your network for the purposes of choosing a network yo

I'm not going to guess the foibles of law, especially the British courts. But the intention of accessing your network for the purposes of choosing a network you're authorized to use is different from connecting to networks you know you do not have authorization to use, and then for a purpose that a reasonable person wouldn't expect would be assumed. I.e. I think it's reasonable to expect that I grant permission to my neighbours and passers-by to access my network for the purpose of choosing their own network. I don't expect that they will be adding my address to a data-set. And maybe individuals do speculatively connect to random networks, but that's different to doing it at an industrial scale.

betterunix2 5y ago
Except that nobody is connecting to a network without permission. Again, we are talking about monitoring radio transmissions (wifi beacons) in an unlicensed band. You do not need to connect to a wifi network to receive beacons from the AP, those are transmitted periodically as part of the normal operation of the AP. You seem to be hung up on what is being done with the recorded beacons, but we are talking about the unlicensed band, so you have no reasonable expectations about what is being done by anyone. That is the point of the unlicensed band. It is meant to be a free-for-all, which is the only thing that is suitable for consumer applications (imagine if every phone, laptop, router, drone, microwave oven, baby monitor, etc. you purchased required you to get permission from everyone around you before it could be used).
- afandian 5y ago
  Not hung up, just interested in exploring it. Thanks for the info, I'd assumed that the SSID broadcast was done on the same band as the actual network communications.
  - betterunix2 5y ago
    It is broadcast on the same band as the communications, which is almost always in an unlicensed band (if your wifi network used a licensed band you would know -- you would have had to fill out a bunch of paperwork and pay a fee for your license). The point here is that anyone can monitor your wifi transmissions, not just the AP beacons, for any purpose.

betterunix2 5y ago

Except that nobody is connecting to a network without permission. Again, we are talking about monitoring radio transmissions (wifi beacons) in an unlicensed band. You do not need to connect to a wifi network to receive beacons from the AP, those are transmitted periodically as part of the normal operation of the AP. You seem to be hung up on what is being done with the recorded beacons, but we are talking about the unlicensed band, so you have no reasonable expectations about what is being done by anyone. That is the point of the unlicensed band. It is meant to be a free-for-all, which is the only thing that is suitable for consumer applications (imagine if every phone, laptop, router, drone, microwave oven, baby monitor, etc. you purchased required you to get permission from everyone around you before it could be used).

afandian 5y ago
Not hung up, just interested in exploring it. Thanks for the info, I'd assumed that the SSID broadcast was done on the same band as the actual network communications.
- betterunix2 5y ago
  It is broadcast on the same band as the communications, which is almost always in an unlicensed band (if your wifi network used a licensed band you would know -- you would have had to fill out a bunch of paperwork and pay a fee for your license). The point here is that anyone can monitor your wifi transmissions, not just the AP beacons, for any purpose.