An open letter

[kjn]

To our neighbour who thought it was a lark to print troll faces with our printer.

As a matter of policy, me and my family has kept our wireless network open for more than five years. It makes things easier for us, and it provides a useful service to our visitors, one which we always have appreciated ourselves while being away from home. We do not begrudge our neighbours and their visitors to use it either: bandwidth is a common good.

However, the most reliable way to destroy a common good is to abuse it. This is the second time, so now you've destroyed a common good, all for five minutes of amusement. Our network is now another closed frequency hog.

Comments

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

Change the network name to $NEIGHBORiswhywecan'thavenicethings.

[jophan.livejournal.com]

How can you know they did it on purpose and that it's not the kids in the family who were logged in on your network without realising it? Or did they print the same stuff both times? I end up logged in to a neighbour's network now and then when I start the computer.

[canyonwalker.livejournal.com]

Hahaha, I LIKE that!

[canyonwalker.livejournal.com]

I'm a little surprised you ran an open network. I would never do that.

1. I live in a dense neighborhood. I can see 20 advertised network IDs right now. The number of people obviously using the Internet within range increases all the following risks:

2. With that many people, there's a greater chance of bandwidth contention if I left my network open and too many people decide to use it.

3. With that many people, I don't know/trust everyone. Having a secured network is an additional level of protection against people snooping my computers and network traffic.

4. I would be concerned about an ISP claiming breach of contract. They typically define the service as being for home/personal use only, and may interpret me allowing neighbors onto my service as running a commercial resale business even if I'm not charging money for it.

[kjn]

Document consists of "U MAD [troll face]", and we get gazillion copies (I do have a high-capacity printer).

So yes, it's done on purpose.

[kjn]

Too much hassle to switch every device. Though I might put a notice be the entrance.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

"That's what you get for not securing your wi-fi, noob!"

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

The standard way of running an open wi-fi is to have it segregated from your traffic, with an optional limiter to maintain your priority. Although if your printer is accessible, that's obviously not what you're doing.

My more serious concerns would be legal: There's assumptions that if you own the traffic, you're responsible for any traffic that goes through it. Piracy is the big one, illegal material a close second. "Piracy" is way less of a legal/ISP hassle out in Scandahoovia, though.

I used to run my network and then a second unsecured "free internet for my neighbours, go ahead" network. The SSID made that clear, though. And I shut it down after the third month in a row when I got a "Zuffa LLC does not like you torrenting UFC fights 30 seconds after they end" DMCA notice. The DMCA has no force or applicability in my country, but my ISP wanted me to know they'd gotten it because they don't particularly approve of piracy even if they're legally not obliged to do a damn thing about it.

So my story is also a "this is why you can't have nice things" kind of tale.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

You have to do it on every device ANYWAY, to add your new WPA passphrase. Might as well swap SSIDs too.

[culfinriel.livejournal.com]

That's brilliant.

[kjn]

Had already done the latter.

[kjn]

Yeah, I'd have preferred to have two different lines, but the crap ISP-supplied router doesn't support that.

And given the way the crap ISP-supplied router is built, and the way our apartment is built, we couldn't get proper wired connections to the printer or my desktop.

[jophan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, sounds like a git who uncritically has bought the copyright cult's message that all networks everywhere must be protected, and believes that you are noobs who needs to be taught a lesson and ridiculed a little.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

This is why my crap isp-supplied modem/router combo (which is actually a pretty awesome router, with all the useful functions locked away under a password the company won't let me have - rant for another day) is dropped into Bridge modem-only mode and I've got an actual router behind it.

THAT router can handle multiple wi-fi networks, client separation, routing based on which network you connect to, etc. And because all that seems like work, it just does simple wireless+wired routing.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

.... copyright cult?

"all networks everywhere must be protected, if you don't lock it down you deserve to have it abused" is classic script kiddy. Especially given the trollface: That's "I'm doing this because you didn't stop me, no other reason". It's the internet equivalent of crank-calling using the "intercom" functions of a cheap 1990s wireless phone.

This tends to be way more the "for the lulz" children, with a sideline of "I'm TEACHING you an important LESSON about PRIVACY" than it is anyone concerned with copyright.

[kjn]

1. With everyone having their own private locked network, you get much more network congestion and risk for interference between them.

2. Yes, but I believe people are gracious and nice enough to be considerate in using another person's open network. Call me naïve, but I prefer to trust other people until they show they're not worthy of trust.

3. Almost all of us connect to wireless networks we do not control anyway, the key is to secure the computer itself and the end-to-end connections. Having an unsecured network at home simply means I concentrate on the security that matters, ie of the computers.

4. See 2.