Linksys

[pattayapirate]

l won't bore you with why am not paying for an isp etc. Anyway, in desperation I

was fiddling with my laptop and for want of something better to do, l configured my Intel Wan connection. The next thing I know is I can connect to an open linksys access point. lt loads at up to 50Mbps. lt's been over a month and hasn't cost me a penny.

Sounds good, yes. The problem is I have a conscience. How do I find out where this system is located and offer them some money?

[britmaveric]

I wouldnt have a concern, its the owner's issues to lock down the WAP. Leach away and enjoy it while it lasts.

[Trevor]

A Swiss friend traced a nearby signal to a computer shop in Basel. He agreed a weekly fee in return for passwords. Then the shop's service became unreliable and my friend stopped paying him but he then found an unknown new signal which he hijacks for free. Probably a guy in a neighboring apartment block.

Hey, just enjoy your freebie while you can. Nothing lasts!

[pattayapirate]

Thanks for the replies, you summed up what i was already thinking. l wish l didn't have this concience thing built in as a peripheral.

[Richard-BKK]

You better think twice before accessing another person's Wi-Fi wireless network. The law can see using somebodies Wi-Fi Internet as a unlawful act.

The Thai Law is not that different as it is in Singapore.....

http://farang.pai-nai.com/article.php/Sing...ces-three-years

[cdnvic]

I've left wifi open for people to use before, and I'm not the only one doing it, but it's hard to tell the difference between a free wifi hotspot and one someone forgot to secure at all. I don't see a big deal in checking your email on open wifi while on the road, but I'd check carefully before using alot of bandwidth as the owner may be limited to a quota and find themselves short if you are streaming five gigs of television everyday.

[kayo]

I agree with cdnvic's sentiment posted above mine here

and with Brit's

I wouldnt have a concern, its the owner's issues to lock down the WAP. Leach away and enjoy it while it lasts.

I have since a few months been using (my own) linksys wifi network, and yes, it's the Wifi owner's responsability to lock it down - in common social behavioural laws at least.

On the other hand, I use my locator (when not at home) to find networks I can connect to, ideally fro free when I can. Never Use someone elses for huge transfers as Vic says, nor EVER for anything illegal, or dodgy.

But for random usage, sure.

Many people (i know of a fair few) actually leave their wifi's unsecured with some notion of sharing and sharing alike. Fair on them if they wanna do that.

I say, surf away.

But be respectful, and treat it as you would a friends. Don't abuse it by jeapordising anybody's legal situation or abusing the bandwith is all.

[nikster]

I agree with the common sentiment here: Use the linksys, just don't abuse it. E.g. don't start up Azureus and haul down Gigabytes upon gigabytes of videos.

But use it for checking emails, surfing the web etc.

It doesn't cost the guy a dime.

I leave my own wireless network open for everyone to use. I figure I pay a flat rate, so I really don't mind sharing. And I figure that if I somehow have a problem all of a sudden, it's very easy for me to go and slap a password on... chances are if you are on my network with Azureus, there will be a password the next day

cheers, N.

[astral]

It seems we are discussing a grey area here.

How does one establish that a wireless site is open for all comers,

or just a forgetful/inexperienced owner??

Are we "stealing" his bandwidth if we connect?

Singapore seems to think so.

Thailand has not decided, as far as I can tell.

What is the law in your country?

What do you think? (Comments with care please )

[Phil Conners]

Life would be a lot easier if everyone would leave their wifi access point open - but of course that would also also give guests access to the files shared on the LAN and guests entering through the wifi access point do not have to go through any firewall to get to PC's in the LAN.

[monty]

Unfortunately in a lot of countries, including Thailand, having an internet access account in your name also brings responsibilities with it!

Remember, if somebody is using your account to upload kiddy porn to some webserver, you might end up in some serious troubles!

Not that long ago Farang was arrested in Patters for running one of those porn webcam sites, he was tracked and found purely through tracing his IP address by the authorities (in cooperation with his ISP).

Care to wonder what explaining you would have had to go through if the internet contract happened to be in your name? That guy might have been living in the condo just below you and doing things through your wifi accespoint!!!

Basically, any accespoint through which one might gain internet access should be well and truly secured. Not only for your own files etc, but also against unauthorized and possible illegal use of your connection. You're the one responsible.

On top of it, a lot of ISP contracts forbid the sharing of your account, especially the cheaper "home" packages. You might run the risk of being sued by your ISP, since by sharing you are taking away possible customers and their revenue... Unlikely to be initiated by the ISP, but we all know what happens when the ugly head of jealousy rears it head!

If you really feel the need to share your connection, and the contract with your ISP allows you to, you should really use specially designed equipment to keep very good control of what's happening!

There are specially designed gateways, both software(linux and Windows) and hardware based. They can give you total control, including bandwidth limiting, blocking of ports (smtp port, might be used for spamming attacks), blocking of inappropriate sites etc...

So this is indeed all a bit in a grey area, where the casual user of internet access through unsecured wifi points probably is legally clear, but where the bloke having subscribed to that access is very vulnerable to all sorts of nasty stuff!!!

[Richard-BKK]

People to open your wireless Internet access point is probably in the top 10 list of most stupidest things you can do in this country.

Just think what a criminal or scam artist can do with you taking the fall for what they do, and trying to deny it “was not you” will probably make it even worse for the Thai law.

So not joke around tell everybody where you live so we all can login anonymous and save money on not having to drive around Bangkok to find you.....[with a bit of luck, people with criminal intent will not read this].

Remember you live in Thailand, where you can get 15 years imprisonment for being disrespectful to somebody of the Royal family. All this takes is just one email from your IP address and your vision of Thailand changes forever.

You say who will do that? Not to long ago I would say, nobody (especially not a foreigner) will spray black paint (in public) on a picture of the Thai King. But a week or 2 ago some Swiss guy sprayed black paint on portraits of the King in Chiang Mai. Think like it was you with the paint in your hand (your IP address) trying to explain that somebody had used anonymous your wireless access point.

Trying to find a police person who will belief you is so very small that you have more chance to win the Thai lottery. And if you found a police person who beliefs you, you already so deep into the system that the only way out is by appearing for court.

[nikster]

astral - thanks for reconsidering.

monty, all you said is true, but its all pretty theoretical.

yes, in theory, you might get into some trouble if somebody uses your connection to do some illegal stuff. in practice, the age of road-warrior laptop criminals is not upon us - yet. and thank god it isn't because the things that one could do - again in theory - are truly nasty. if and when that time comes, access points are hopefully secured by default. but until then - in most areas it's pretty safe to just share your connection, although i would recommend to keep an eye on it.

sure, you can be paranoid... but keep in mind that all internet crime happens where remote access is possible. driving around to people's houses to commit internet crimes would just not yield enough benefit for the effort. much easier to release a few trojans, set up a botnet, or just send out hundreds of millions of spam messages...

that said - i used to have my AP open for all to use, but now I have a long-range setup with some guest houses inbetween and made it closed... just so there are no misunderstandings. for technical reasons it's WEP so sophisticated guest users are still welcome to hack their way inside though

[monty]

Nikster,

In my case it was not so theoretical at all...

Long time ago, in the very early days of broadband in Thailand, I had a network up and running in the condo building I was living in.

Some 15 residents were sharing one IPTV connection, with some of those connections in studio's which were being rented out for relative short periods (1 to 6 months).

One good morning I had no connection, username/password refused. Thinking it was some technical glitch I called technical service (CScoms, before they joined with loxinfo) where I was informed that my connection was cancelled due to illegal usage.

They faxed me a log where it was clear that websites had been accessed containing pedophilistic content.

This was before the censorship on the Thai internet, yet at cscoms my account got flagged!

After explaining the connection was shared between several users, they agreed to open up my connection again, but only after installing a proxy/content filtering system on my end! (used Wingate back then...)

I'm pretty sure if something like this happens now, they would report straight to the police, which, luckily, they did not do back then!!!

[pattayapirate]

l opened up a can of worms with my question, didn't l? first off l am not hacking any one, anywhere. l have not the slightest interest in kiddy porn, terroism or kidnapping pets for some culinary treat or robbing anyones online bank ( for a start l wouldn't know how).

l appreciate the replies that stayed on the subject and shall continue to use this s ervice, l say use-not abuse. As was pointed out, if l was causing the person problems, he has ways of blocking me.

Just maybe, as some suggested, there are just good hearted out there that don't mind helping out other people if it costs them no money or grief.

[monty]

The general consensus (with which I agree) is that nobody will make much of a problem out of people using open access in a responsible way!

Unfortunately there are some irresponsible people out there, so the best advice to people having these access points is to protect them!

No problems when you live in a house in the boonies, but definitely risky in a condo, where there can be quite a few neighbors who you've never ever seen before, both from the floors above and below, able to access your internet connection from the luxury/privacy of their office/bedroom!

[pattayapirate]

l opened up a can of worms with my question, didn't l? first off l am not hacking any one, anywhere. l have not the slightest interest in kiddy porn, terroism or kidnapping pets for some culinary treat or robbing anyones online bank ( for a start l wouldn't know how).

l appreciate the replies that stayed on the subject and shall continue to use this s ervice, l say use-not abuse. As was pointed out, if l was causing the person problems, he has ways of blocking me.

Just maybe, as some suggested, there are just good hearted out there that don't mind helping out other people if it costs them no money or grief.

Just after i posted my thing on linksys, i came under a concerted attack by someone. Whoever it was really screwed my system. I doubt it was the person on the linksys that i'm using as i made it clear that i would be happy to pay if they got in touch. A lesson learned, if you freeload on an unencrypted WiFi, you'd better have your firewall working well and run antivirus and antispyware.

[kayo]

PTYA Pirate We forgot about it going the other way didn't we? Woops! Sorry!

I got a quick anecdote, while I'm here.

Within the time since this topic started, I've been spending some fair amount of time in an apartment in Monaco belongs to a friend of mine (who's never there).

He hasn't got Wifi or anything cos he's never there, so I spent a wee bit of time going round the flat trying to find an unprotected wifi (only so I could log on to ThaiVisa of course ).

Well, there were plenty of offices and appartments with WIFI, but these people in Monaco all seem to be protected. I swear I detected about thirty different networks... .. 8 Floors UP!

But ALAS they were all WEP Encoded...

So after a bit of frustration, I eventually gave up, and had a cup of tea and a smoke on the balcony. Putting my laptop down on a little table, right in the corner of the balcony, I suddenly got a "beep" that I was connected!!!!!

Well,needless to say, instead of quickly downloading my emails while I had the chance... I had to inspect!

the connection just said the default "linksys". Ok! fine... moved my laptop away from the corner... lost signal..... Back right up into the corner... access strong!!

Punchline?

Guess who the neighbours are on that side?

the Royal Thai Consulate of Monaco!!!!!

Crazy but True, I couldn't make it up if i tried!!!!

Kayo

[pattayapirate]

Nice one Kayo. Just hope you had all the defences up.

[kayo]

Sure did Pirate.

Hey BTW, you never mentioned what happened.

You only said you came under attack.

What happened?

And what now?

[pattayapirate]

Sure did Pirate.

Hey BTW, you never mentioned what happened.

You only said you came under attack.

What happened?

And what now?

A hand appeared on my desk top with a balloon and started pointing to my shortcuts and saying, "i like this shortcut" then pointing to another and said, " this one's good too". I couldn't believe my eyes. I thought i was hallucinating. I hit the radio off button and shut the machine down immediately. l started it back up and it was all over the place. Shortcuts moving about, my curser changing shapes and i couldn't get it to boot to Windows. I shut it down again, started in safe mode, ran Win Defender and then anti vir guard. l managed to get it to boot into recovery and ran the stuff again. Then i had to start from scratch. I still can't believe what i saw. If i hadn't given up the wacky backy 25 years ago i'd swear i was seeing things.

l'm no expert but whoever got at me is pretty clever.

[Phil Conners]

You probably enabled remote assistance.

Disable it by going to control panel > system > remote (tab) - then untick both remote assistance and remote desktop.

[kayo]

I hope Phil is closer to the mark than my PM to you Pirate!

kayo!

[pattayapirate]

You probably enabled remote assistance.

Disable it by going to control panel > system > remote (tab) - then untick both remote assistance and remote desktop.

I did both of them.

[pattayapirate]

I hope Phil is closer to the mark than my PM to you Pirate!

kayo!

Kayo. l've tried to get to Huski but l haven't the foggiest how to do it. l did send him a message but wether it got there or not, l've no idea. lf it did i'm doubful he made much sense of what it was about. Suggestions?

[cdnvic]

A lesson learned, if you freeload on an unencrypted WiFi, you'd better have your firewall working well and run antivirus and antispyware.

Actually, I'd recommend that for running on the internet, period.