I was impressed by ArkanGL's comments that he saw it as part of an ethic to leave his home wifi unsecured so that it can be shared by others. I'm currently doing the same, though only because the modem crashed recently and had to have a hard reset, and I haven't got around to setting up the security again.

We have plenty of unused bandwidth available on our allowance each month - and if it starts to get low I can always password protect it. And it's unlikely to slow our use down massively unless someone is seriously torrenting, in which case I can likewise turn off the tap.

The only thing about it that really does worry me is that I have a static IP, very easily connected to me. What if the neighbours happen to be surfing kiddie porn (the nuclear option in terms of Fucking Up One's Entire Life) from my IP address? Pretty hard to prove it wasn't me...

Perspectives?

Part of the 'freedom dividend' for me is that I'm not forever tapping a password into my iPhone.

quote:

Pretty hard to prove it wasn't me...

Impossible to prove it was you.
As far as I know, nobody ever got convicted on the sole basis of an IP address.

Sure, the police could probably use that information as grounds for a search.
In that case, if they don't find anything on your computer, and find out that your network is open, I hardly see how they could blame you.

Also : if you think your neighbours are likely do download child-porn (on your network on anybody else's), you may want to call the cops.

I know recent Apple routers come with a cool feature—I presume other brands have it too—that allows you to set up s separate Guest network. That way you can have a nice walled garden for your home devices and an open space for the 'hood.

If I was going to do something like this that is the way I would try to go… Sure it is nice to try and live by the Information Wants To Be Free ethic but I don't really want unknown guests being on the same intranet as me and all my internal home devices.

(Also, you can easily set your iPhone up to remember your home wireless password.)

If we weren't living where we are living, I would be more comfortable leaving it open.. but as it stands, we have a college behind us, and LOTS of neighbours (small expample, I can pick up 7 networks, as well as our own).. a friend recently got three legal notices, and disconnected by his ISP as a neighbour (or someone in the street??) was using his network to download movies.. LOTS of movies!

In an area that was even slightly less heavily populated I would reconsider.. We only secured ours when we added a harddrive onto the network..

I really like what Heavyboots says.. about being able to have a guest network..

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In an area that was even slightly less heavily populated I would reconsider..

Back in Paris, I had an open network in the middle of a big apartment building.
Lots of networks there.
Nothing bad ever happened.

The only folders I share on my network are my MP3s and movies.
No personal stuff.

We let one of my husband's friends live with us when he was homeless. He was big into bit torrent and was downloading a lot of movies. He explained that in order to get the "good" stuff he also had to upload stuff. He said that the hindi grandma porn he had uploaded was extremely popular.

My husband's job was (and luckily still is) paying for our broadband.

RIP Paul

Unless your WiFi network is secured with WPA-2 AES encryption, it is effectively open to hacking, even by "script kiddies", since there is exploit code available for automatic attacks on WEP (in real time, on the fly, from several years ago) and, as of last year, for WPA TKIP encryption in near real time (it takes about one minute).

Even WPA-2 AES could be vulnerable if you use a trivial, short password, which is vulnerable to a dictionary attack.

You can even rent time on an Amazon EC2 computing cloud service cluster:

http://www.wpacracker.com/

quote:

WPA-PSK networks are vulnerable to dictionary attacks, but running a respectable-sized dictionary over a WPA network handshake can take days or weeks. WPA Cracker gives you access to a 400CPU cluster that will run your network capture against a 135 million word dictionary created specifically for WPA passwords. While this job would take over 5 days on a contemporary dual-core PC, on our cluster it takes an average of 20 minutes, for only $17.

However, not every child porn / terrorism investigation team is incompetent enough to assume that a home broadband / WiFi router IP address which they trace, automatically requires a dawn raid on the innocent household.

The Operation Algebra investigation in Scotland was intelligent enough to determine
the home address of a child porn / child rape suspect, by cross referencing the locations of the nearby open home broadband / WiFi router addresses, which he was abusing, without kicking down the doors of the innocent near neighbours.

See:

Operation Algebra child rape convictions in Scotland: open WiFi tracking, digital camera image forensics

World famous security expert and cryptographer Bruce Schneier also runs an open WIFi network at home:

My Open Wireless Network

If you really want to give the authorities something to ponder, then run a Tor Exit Node as well as an open WiFi network, using your broadband / Wifi router public gateway IP address.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Memetic Engineer,

Meh - ended up locking it up again (WPA2) - someone close found it almost immediately and began leeching hard, to the extent that all our own services slowed to a crawl and it made a significant hole in our monthly bandwidth quota. Tragedy of the fucken commons...

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He said that the Hindi grandma porn he had uploaded was extremely popular.

That you share this level of intimacy with a South Asia homeless porn distributing house guest is a high level Mitzah. Do you let him share computer time with your kids?

Mine's been open for years, as has the mobile wifi brodcast from my truck. Are people leeching off me? I've no idea. Not gonna check, nor do I know how.

Oh, I didn't do anything remotely technical. We were watching episodes of QI on YouTube and had to preload them and wait for them to load instead of being able to just click and watch, and then our account has peak and offpeak times and there was a heap of usage in the off-peak when I knew we weren't using it. I'm willing to be kind, but not if it significantly impacts our own utility...

quote:

Originally posted by ArkanGL:

quote:

In an area that was even slightly less heavily populated I would reconsider..

Back in Paris, I had an open network in the middle of a big apartment building.
Lots of networks there.
Nothing bad ever happened.

The only folders I share on my network are my MP3s and movies.
No personal stuff.

Maybe people are more polite over it in Paris.. but friends experiences, locally, put me off.
If I could limit the bandwidth I shared, sure, I'd be up for it.. but as things stand, sorry..

quote:

Originally posted by MrsK:



Maybe people are more polite over it in Paris..

Try another explanation.

quote:

Originally posted by Memetic Engineer:
Unless your WiFi network ...

If you really want to give the authorities something to ponder, then run a Tor Exit Node as well as an open WiFi network, using your broadband / Wifi router public gateway IP address.

This is the best reason I've read for locking down.

By leaving your network open, you're letting anyone take delivery and send data from your address. And, its one thing to be charitable, but its another to abet criminal behavior.

Your free bandwidth can easily be used in criminal activity. In addition, file privledges will not protect your personal information from a concerted attack.

Its possible that bandwidth generousity could result in an unwanted visit from the RCMP or local law enforcment.