On 4/25/11 11:21 PM, Dan wrote:
At 4:37 PM -0700 4/25/2011, Bruce Johnson wrote:
Kind of obvious advice for most folks, but they still leave the
electronic ones open all the time.
<http://tinyurl.com/3nvokkh>
ROFLMAO
People here in South Jersey still leave their doors and cars
unlocked. Getting them to lock down their wi-fi networks? Yea right.
sigh... To make it easier to service FiOS installations, Verizon has
been installing the ONT (Optical Network Terminal) on the *OUTSIDE* of
homes. Pop the door's locking screw, open its hatch, and you
immediately have free access to that home's cat5, coax, and phone ports!
- Dan.
They leave doors and cars unlocked in rural NH also. For the whole 8+
years I've known him, my BF (who, incidentally, was originally from
South Jersey but had escaped from NJ about 10 years before I met him)
has never locked the door to his house, and only occasionally his car or
truck -- and that was only when he was visiting me in my Sewer Rat Nest
and I taught him he had to, at least when he was visiting ME (in
Elizabeth NJ, where I lived for 25 years until I finally escaped from NJ
too, with his help -- yes, horrors but I can admit it in public, now
that I don't live there anymore).
Well, my city dwelling Sewer Rat tendencies from a quarter of a decade
in the Sewer are such that I am a habitual door locker (i.e., apartment
and car), the kind who actually checks to make sure I locked the
apartment or car, whichever applied at the time, when
over-stressed/spaced out. In fact, soon after my escape (to a small town
in NH) I :::::blush::::: accidentally locked myself out on the upstairs
porch this winter when it was in the teens and had to stay out there for
over an hour until a neighbor could rescue me. :::::blush:::::
Ah well. Now about that wi-fi security thing. I read the article Bruce
linked to, and this was the first I had heard of innocent people being
accused of downloading child porn because some pervert used their
non-secured wi-fi connection to download it. I WAS familiar with the
concept of the "32% of all people have tried to access other people's
wi-fi networks" thing, though, because, I will admit, when I originally
got my iBook (summer 2007) which had Airport, and found that networks
were showing up when I sat in my living room with it, I was occasionally
an opportunist. Translation:
98% of the time I used my own Internet connection (dialup until I
finally got DSL in the fall of 2009). However, every so often if I was
on the iBook, I would try to join networks it detected just to see if I
could. If they were secured (i.e., I got a prompt asking for a
password), that was the end of my attempt on that network. If it wasn't
secured and I got right on, yeah, I would use it for a few minutes. Not
for child porn though. LOL I would use it to peek around on some of my
Sims forums just amazed that I was able to do it at all (not to mention
wowed by the high speed), and was too lazy to go back in the bedroom on
the Quicksilver to use my legitimate Internet access.
BUT, and now comes the dicey part. After a few months, I had managed to
remember the names of the secured networks and which ones I could get
on. So occasionally on one of the monthly Sims contests I would
participate on at some of the forums, I began to get on the iBook and
"borrow" half an hour to maybe an hour or so to upload Sim pictures
(challenge/contest entries) to my Photobucket account (or look at the
other entries posted by my "competitors" on THEIR Photobucket accounts).
That used to take me literally DAYS on my dialup account; I only had the
patience to spend 3-4 hours at a time waiting for my uploads to go up or
to see all the other Simmers' pictures, and I would need to upload (or
look at) 25-50 Sim pictures per challenge/contest entry. So it would
take me anywhere from 3 days to a week to upload my pics/look at others
on my dialup connection, compared to an hour or maybe a little less if I
"borrowed" a little wi-fi. So yeah, I used to do that (and no, none of
us had any naked or otherwise inappropriate pictures of Sim children!).
Obviously, when I finally got DSL in 2009 I didn't need to do that
anymore, and in fact, since my BF gave me a router, I was able to have
my own little network and go online in the living room with the iBook's
Airport legitimately. Now back then I was quite deliberate in not
securing my network -- I had, after all, occasionally "borrowed" wi-fi
from neighbors, and I honestly felt that leaving mine open would be
"returning the favor" to some other neighbor who was still in the
position I had only just gotten out of -- stuck on dialup, unable to
afford high speed Internet.
As time went on -- a few months to almost a year -- I noticed (from my
iBook's Airport) that networks were "disappearing" -- both ones I
remembered as secured as well as the ones I used to "borrow" from, and
the new ones slowly coming in, including the return of some old ones,
almost all of them were secured. I couldn't resist trying to see if I
COULD join the new ones or not, even though I had no intention of using
them since I had my own now. I began to start thinking about securing my
own at that point, and I actually tried, but couldn't fully understand
the instructions I was getting from the router's website (and then it
stopped letting me in or something), so it didn't happen. Then I moved
up here, and while people may or may not be locking their house and car
doors (they don't in my BF's village and neither of us know my new town
or anyone in it THAT well to know those kinds of habits and IMO you
don't just ask strangers if they lock their house and car doors!) --
they are definitely locking up their wi-fi. Mine is the ONLY unlocked
network in the vicinity.
Even though I didn't know about this "you downloaded child porn!" false
accusation business until reading that link of Bruce's yesterday, and
having "open" wi-fi didn't bother me at all (until recently), my wi-fi
is still unlocked because I don't know frickin HOW to lock it up. My BF
doesn't know how to do it either. He's been using this "automatically
secure" Verizon brick" thing for about a year now, and when he used to
use his router (LOL he had "wireless dialup" in his house for a few
years) he never bothered even trying to secure it.
Oh well.
And geez, I don't even download ADULT porn.
--
You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for
those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs.
The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette
guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml
To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
