alancain
Premium
join:2006-07-10
Grand Coulee, WA
 ·Bigdam.net
| reply to Anomus
Re: interesting
You are putting those neighbors of yours at risk; they are at risk in several ways. If you are stealing movies and images, and music, you are from the point of view of the legal system stealing content. You may be downloading child porn, for all we know, putting your neighbors at risk of felony convictions if they get pinned for it (not reasonable, but possible). They may get the blame; you are putting them at risk. I am certain that what you are doing is illegal and prosecutable.
I would hide my cantenna if I were you.
And on the topic of hotspots that are open versus hotspots that are closed, the test is easy: does the hotspot invite you in or does it not. An invitation must be active and not passive. Unless the hotspot is labelled as an invitation it is not open, regardless of whether the users are sophisticated or not. I have one at my office that is an invitation. Its ESSID includes the phrase freenet_dhcp; pretty clear, eh?
My neighbor has one that says SMITHnet. That is not an invitation, even though it is set up to give addresses automatically, and is not secured. They are inexperienced, but it is not a public access point. As they are not my customers, I let them be; I might tip them off sometime, but I haven't really tried to search them down. If they were my customers, I would pursue it. I might well associate with the access point then, too. Their bandwidth is really my bandwidth in that case.
A chicken in the yard is not fair game just because you see it.
Taking things without permission is called theft. |
