Wireless Piggybacking

[Jokerswild]

A man was arrested for wireless piggybacking. What are your thoughts on this.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article...47213&from=rss

[Tyreal]

I have no remorse for people who do not secure their wireless connection and then get angry when people use it. If you don't want people to use it, secure it!

[Jokerswild]

The only bad part is this guy might be taken to trial and he's a registered sex offender. I hate to think that they might make a law or give a ruling about wireless based on this guy.

[fps justin]

Originally Posted by jokerswild

The only bad part is this guy might be taken to trial and he's a registered sex offender. I hate to think that they might make a law or give a ruling about wireless based on this guy.

good point.

[One4yu2c]

Originally Posted by Tyreal

I have no remorse for people who do not secure their wireless connection and then get angry when people use it. If you don't want people to use it, secure it!

It's not that cut and dry in this case. Like many coffee shops, they provide an unsecured wireless connection for the enjoyment of their patrons (customers). A coffee shop is a highly popular form of social gatherings, both for business and pleasure, and it's almost expected these days that a wireless connection is going to be offered.

The person we should all be upset at is the idiot that was arrested. Had this been a rare occurrence, I highly doubt it would have been an issue. However, according to the article, the dude would spend hours at a time parked outside, which went on for three months. That's excessive. And the arrest wasn't out of the blue, there was an initial complaint that, if heeded, could have avoided this whole situation:

• "When deputies told Smith to knock it off, he came back and is now charged with theft of services."

Would it really have killed him to stop in and buy a latté every once in awhile?

[Tyreal]

I didn't know that the service was free.

They will probably go ahead and check his computer for what he was looking at as well. Mustn't be good if he was parked outside the store and not sitting in it.

It just annoys me when people do not secure their networks and then whine when bad things happen to them. I once setup a network for someone, when I was picking up the connection from the router, I picked up around 3 other signals from the neighbours, two of which were vulnerable.

[drew and not u]

Once google covers the earth in free wireless broadband this will be a thing of the past!!! :P

[polobunny]

Originally Posted by Tyreal

I have no remorse for people who do not secure their wireless connection and then get angry when people use it. If you don't want people to use it, secure it!

Yes but then again, there's borrowing it for a few minutes and using it everyday. I've found myself internet-less sometimes while on call and I needed to check for some things. Simply go aside a few homes, fire up the wireless and voila.