WiFi Ethics: But what if you don't understand?

[DurocShark]

I was contacted recently by someone on a car board who couldn't connect to their wifi signal anymore.

Thinking that something was introducing interference, I instructed her to change channels and such, and try some of the antenna enhancements I've seen, turn off cordless phones, microwaves, etc. I pointed her to MacStumbler (she has a macbook with an airport card) to help her find where the signal is strongest in her house.

After going around and around I discover she'd been stealing her neighbor's unsecured wifi, but didn't know it was stealing. They finally locked it down. I guess she just thought it was a free signal she could use to get to the internet. :roll:

So I explained it to her. She's scared now thinking she's going to jail.

Now I'm wondering if she got caught, and had to go to court, could a complete lack of understanding of the technology be a defense?

 

[MX2]

She'll be fine. Although...ignorance of the law is no excuse

 

[KLin]

I thought it would be the problem of the unsecured wireless network's owner.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Technically KLin, but if you're truly stealing it on purpose and use the connection for devious purposes, telco companies will have your MAC address also...so if the owner claims ignorance...they can still find you if you continue to use it by just comparing the MACs.

unless you're spoofing it...

 

[Kenazo]

I was connecting to the neighbours for a while by accident. I had saved my wep key so I didnt' even notice that when it was connecting, it wasn't connecting to my router.

 

[KLin]

Originally posted by: ch33zw1z
Technically KLin, but if you're truly stealing it on purpose and use the connection for devious purposes, telco companies will have your MAC address also...so if the owner claims ignorance...they can still find you if you continue to use it by just comparing the MACs.

unless you're spoofing it...

I thought all outbound traffic would have the router's mac address in the packets because of network address translation?

 

[ch33zw1z]

In the packets, MACs do not change, IP addresses do tho. The receiving end would receive the packet with the last hop as the sender IP address, but the original senders MAC.

NAT uses IP addresses matched with ports to properly forward public traffic to private IP's.

 

[smack Down]

Is stealing other people wifi even illegal?

 

[BobDaMenkey]

As another said, not knowing the law is not an excuse. However I'd be highly supprised if someone took the person you spoke of to court over that. It sounds like she was just surfing the net ect without doing any serious downloading or anything.

Now if you were doing more harmful things over the network then it might be an issue. But at that point you'd also have to know exactly what you were doing too, so you can't claim ignorance.

Although I never did get my laptop to pick up MY network while it was running linux, it'd always snag a free access one from the neighboors.

 

[MX2]

Originally posted by: smack Down
Is stealing other people wifi even illegal?

A few folks were arrested here locally about 6 months ago for a wifi stealing incident. Dont know if thats the norm for other cities or states.

EDIT:Guess it was a year ago...Text

 

[smack Down]

Originally posted by: BobDaMenkey
As another said, not knowing the law is not an excuse. However I'd be highly supprised if someone took the person you spoke of to court over that. It sounds like she was just surfing the net ect without doing any serious downloading or anything.

Now if you were doing more harmful things over the network then it might be an issue. But at that point you'd also have to know exactly what you were doing too, so you can't claim ignorance.

Although I never did get my laptop to pick up MY network while it was running linux, it'd always snag a free access one from the neighboors.

Being ignorant of the law is no excuse, but that isn't the case here. Assuming that person didn't know they were stealing the WIFI is an excuse. May laws require intent and there was a case about a guy stealing a red mini-van by mistake and the case against him was dropped because he thought he was driving his own red mini-van.