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Why is it hard to use random open wifis? Walking around my neighborhood there are at least 5 open wifis in my block. With google fiber, high speed, open public

Why is it hard to use random open wifis? Walking around my neighborhood there are at least 5 open wifis in my block. With google fiber, high speed, open public wifi will only get more common.

moe 14y ago
Why is it hard to use random open wifis? Because of the "walking around" part.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
graue 14y ago
Where do you live? In the two major US cities where I've lived, I consistently find that wireless networks are passworded, don't work, or just show a paywall. In 2005 I could find random apartment-dwellers with open wifi, but things have changed. Even cafes use passwords to make sure you bought something there.
- batista 14y ago
  You could buy something once then, and the other days just re-use the password from outside the cafe.
  - lutusp 14y ago
    Yes, you could do that, but it would clearly be fraud. I visited a town in Alaska this summer that had a McDonald's with an open hub -- no password. I asked about it, and the proprietor said it was open to attract people to his business, and he didn't care that some people cheated, especially because the cheaters needed to gather around his place of business (to get adequate signal strength), making it look popular and attracting paying customers. But a hub that has a password is a different story. In that case, you can't claim not to know the behavior is fraud.
acabal 14y ago
This is going to become less and less common, if only because routers/modems distributed by ISP's typically are passworded by default now. In Germany (where I'm staying) it's almost impossible to find an open wifi network anywhere, despite having 20 to choose from at any point in town. I'm pretty scared for anonymity on the internet in the next decade. Even with just email, you can take total precautions on your own end: host your own mail server, always use SSL, and so on, but if your emails aren't PGP encrypted (and let's face it, PGP is too hard to comprehend for mere mortals, which is who you'll be communicating with most of the time), there's always going to be a copy of your communications on the recipient's mail server: Google, Hotmail, etc. Never before in history has a complete and total record of all of your mail ever sent in your entire life been available for government snooping. But that's the reality today--all the government has to do is ask your email provider--or one of your contact's email providers--nicely.
- luriel 14y ago
  > This is going to become less and less common, if only because routers/modems distributed by ISP's typically are passworded by default now. In Germany (where I'm staying) it's almost impossible to find an open wifi network anywhere, despite having 20 to choose from at any point in town. Germany is absolutely a Wifi nightmare, I was traveling around Europe last year, and in Poland you could get Wifi basically anywhere, hell, i got online while running form one train to another at some random train station in the middle of nowhere. Then I arrived to Berlin, and what a change, I spent hours trying to find a place to get online. The problem in Germany is totally insane laws, and a population too brainwashed into following every silly rule. In any case, cracking closed Wifi networks is relatively easy, and will (which is why is silly to close your wifi, because if somebody uses it for something nasty, you will have much more trouble showing that it wasn't you, while if it is open everyone understands that anyone could have done it).
batista 14y ago
>Why is it hard to use random open wifis? Walking around my neighborhood there are at least 5 open wifis in my block. With google fiber, high speed, open public wifi will only get more common. If you are in the US (and in some other countries), you know it's illegal, right?
- lutusp 14y ago
  > If you are in the US (and in some other countries), you know it's illegal, right? Not necessarily. An open WiFi hub can represent a free service offered by, for example, a restaurant or lodging establishment, both of which expect and accept public logons in order to attract business. It's not obvious how an individual might distinguish between these hubs and a private hub that happens not to have a password. If someone decided to prosecute a user of an open hub, they would have to shoulder the burden of evidence to prove that a person knowingly defrauded the hub operator, rather than innocently accessed a public resource. If the hub has a password, that's a different story altogether, but in the case of an open WiFi hub, the burden is on law enforcement to prove that an individual knowingly stole the service. Innocent until proven guilty. Imagine someone driving along a public road, next to a drive-in theater. He pulls over and watches the movie over the top of an inadequate fence. Is he guilty of a crime? Imagine someone walking along a street who stops and reads the newspaper headlines through the front of a newspaper vending machine. Is he guilty of a crime? Both the above examples would require the prosecutor to prove "guilty knowledge", knowledge that the behavior was wrong. It's the same with open WiFi hubs. There are plenty of open hubs that are intentionally public, and that accept logons from anyone. And there are hubs owned by unsophisticated computer owners that don't have a password simply because the owner doesn't know how to set one up. Is the public required to distinguish between these cases, or face prosecution? No.
  - batista 14y ago
    >Both the above examples would require the prosecutor to prove "guilty knowledge", knowledge that the behavior was wrong. It's the same with open WiFi hubs. No, it's not. You are not supposed to use a wi-fi, even if it's open (that is, unlocked), unless you have specifically see it advertised as freely available to the public (i.e in an airport, a cafe, etc). >Not necessarily. An open WiFi hub can represent a free service offered by, for example, a restaurant or lodging establishment, both of which expect and accept public logons in order to attract business. It's not obvious how an individual might distinguish between these hubs and a private hub that happens not to have a password. You're not supposed to distinguish between them. You are only supposed to use the restaurant or lodging hub when you are AT the restaurant or the hotel, as a customer. And you're supposed to know which is their wifi name. Being in a cafe that offers free public wifi doesn't give you an excuse to bypass the law and connect to any open nearby Wifi signal you can get ("But, Judge, I couldn't tell which was which").

Why is it hard to use random open wifis? Walking around my neighborhood there are at least 5 open wifis in my block. With google fiber, high speed, open public wifi will only get more common.

moe 14y ago

Why is it hard to use random open wifis? Because of the "walking around" part.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

graue 14y ago

Where do you live? In the two major US cities where I've lived, I consistently find that wireless networks are passworded, don't work, or just show a paywall. In 2005 I could find random apartment-dwellers with open wifi, but things have changed. Even cafes use passwords to make sure you bought something there.

batista 14y ago
You could buy something once then, and the other days just re-use the password from outside the cafe.
- lutusp 14y ago
  Yes, you could do that, but it would clearly be fraud. I visited a town in Alaska this summer that had a McDonald's with an open hub -- no password. I asked about it, and the proprietor said it was open to attract people to his business, and he didn't care that some people cheated, especially because the cheaters needed to gather around his place of business (to get adequate signal strength), making it look popular and attracting paying customers. But a hub that has a password is a different story. In that case, you can't claim not to know the behavior is fraud.

acabal 14y ago

This is going to become less and less common, if only because routers/modems distributed by ISP's typically are passworded by default now. In Germany (where I'm staying) it's almost impossible to find an open wifi network anywhere, despite having 20 to choose from at any point in town. I'm pretty scared for anonymity on the internet in the next decade. Even with just email, you can take total precautions on your own end: host your own mail server, always use SSL, and so on, but if your emails aren't PGP encrypted (and let's face it, PGP is too hard to comprehend for mere mortals, which is who you'll be communicating with most of the time), there's always going to be a copy of your communications on the recipient's mail server: Google, Hotmail, etc. Never before in history has a complete and total record of all of your mail ever sent in your entire life been available for government snooping. But that's the reality today--all the government has to do is ask your email provider--or one of your contact's email providers--nicely.

luriel 14y ago
> This is going to become less and less common, if only because routers/modems distributed by ISP's typically are passworded by default now. In Germany (where I'm staying) it's almost impossible to find an open wifi network anywhere, despite having 20 to choose from at any point in town. Germany is absolutely a Wifi nightmare, I was traveling around Europe last year, and in Poland you could get Wifi basically anywhere, hell, i got online while running form one train to another at some random train station in the middle of nowhere. Then I arrived to Berlin, and what a change, I spent hours trying to find a place to get online. The problem in Germany is totally insane laws, and a population too brainwashed into following every silly rule. In any case, cracking closed Wifi networks is relatively easy, and will (which is why is silly to close your wifi, because if somebody uses it for something nasty, you will have much more trouble showing that it wasn't you, while if it is open everyone understands that anyone could have done it).

batista 14y ago

>Why is it hard to use random open wifis? Walking around my neighborhood there are at least 5 open wifis in my block. With google fiber, high speed, open public wifi will only get more common. If you are in the US (and in some other countries), you know it's illegal, right?

lutusp 14y ago
> If you are in the US (and in some other countries), you know it's illegal, right? Not necessarily. An open WiFi hub can represent a free service offered by, for example, a restaurant or lodging establishment, both of which expect and accept public logons in order to attract business. It's not obvious how an individual might distinguish between these hubs and a private hub that happens not to have a password. If someone decided to prosecute a user of an open hub, they would have to shoulder the burden of evidence to prove that a person knowingly defrauded the hub operator, rather than innocently accessed a public resource. If the hub has a password, that's a different story altogether, but in the case of an open WiFi hub, the burden is on law enforcement to prove that an individual knowingly stole the service. Innocent until proven guilty. Imagine someone driving along a public road, next to a drive-in theater. He pulls over and watches the movie over the top of an inadequate fence. Is he guilty of a crime? Imagine someone walking along a street who stops and reads the newspaper headlines through the front of a newspaper vending machine. Is he guilty of a crime? Both the above examples would require the prosecutor to prove "guilty knowledge", knowledge that the behavior was wrong. It's the same with open WiFi hubs. There are plenty of open hubs that are intentionally public, and that accept logons from anyone. And there are hubs owned by unsophisticated computer owners that don't have a password simply because the owner doesn't know how to set one up. Is the public required to distinguish between these cases, or face prosecution? No.
- batista 14y ago
  >Both the above examples would require the prosecutor to prove "guilty knowledge", knowledge that the behavior was wrong. It's the same with open WiFi hubs. No, it's not. You are not supposed to use a wi-fi, even if it's open (that is, unlocked), unless you have specifically see it advertised as freely available to the public (i.e in an airport, a cafe, etc). >Not necessarily. An open WiFi hub can represent a free service offered by, for example, a restaurant or lodging establishment, both of which expect and accept public logons in order to attract business. It's not obvious how an individual might distinguish between these hubs and a private hub that happens not to have a password. You're not supposed to distinguish between them. You are only supposed to use the restaurant or lodging hub when you are AT the restaurant or the hotel, as a customer. And you're supposed to know which is their wifi name. Being in a cafe that offers free public wifi doesn't give you an excuse to bypass the law and connect to any open nearby Wifi signal you can get ("But, Judge, I couldn't tell which was which").