I'm in your wifi stealing your bandwidth

Yes

14 (20.3%)

Maybe

4 (5.8%)

No

20 (29%)

Unsure

4 (5.8%)

Depends

27 (39.1%)

Total Members Voted: 29

[freeAgent]

Oh, I forgot. While I KNOW HOW to do this, I have never used a custom wireless access point to capture 8,401 people's passwords...

HTTPS, dammit!

Anyway, I would say that *stealing* bandwidth is wrong, but if someone is purposefully putting it out there, I don't see the harm.  I would say that if someone is running an AP wide open with no encryption or protection whatsoever, then they either want people to be able to use it or are negligent, in which case it's not your fault.

[ladyattis]

FA: but I would say even if the door is open, never walk in, more than likely it's a trap against you and not something that's out of generosity or stupidity. In this era, information is king, the bandwidth is just the conduit to it. Using that bandwidth in essence is giving away that information; your information.

-- Brede

[error]

https? Irrelevant when you control the end user's access to DNS.

[freeAgent]

https? Irrelevant when you control the end user's access to DNS.

You are evil.

[freeAgent]

FA: but I would say even if the door is open, never walk in, more than likely it's a trap against you and not something that's out of generosity or stupidity. In this era, information is king, the bandwidth is just the conduit to it. Using that bandwidth in essence is giving away that information; your information.

-- Brede

That's possible, but I think the majority of people out there with open APs don't do it to capture passwords and personal information.  Of course, it always pays to be careful.  It wouldn't be too hard to defeat error's methods by using a VPN and/or third-party DNS service like OpenDNS, but I digress.

[Lindsey]

I can set up an access point that makes people pay for it, blocks porn, captures their Myspace passwords...

I'd be sad if somebody blocked my pr0n. 

[Taors]

The precious?

[Lindsey]

Wouldn't you be disappointed if suddenly there was no porn? 

[wtfk]

What about encrypted email passwords?  Those aren't particularly compromised, are they?  I deliberately go through port 995 to get my email with SSL so I'm not giving my password to everyone between me and my email server.

[ladyattis]

The data can still be captured so that means they can work on it to crack it eventually. The best solutions are to change your password often if you use unprotected or open Wifi. Also, the last measure is to never use anyone's wifi, un/protected, open, or otherwise. Most of the wifi protocols are too easily hacked, even with a WEP key.

-- Brede

[wtfk]

The data can still be captured so that means they can work on it to crack it eventually. The best solutions are to change your password often if you use unprotected or open Wifi. Also, the last measure is to never use anyone's wifi, un/protected, open, or otherwise. Most of the wifi protocols are too easily hacked, even with a WEP key.

-- Brede

I'm not worried about the data--more so the password--which is why I use SSL for email...and I never enter passwords I'm concerned about on the web unless it's a secure page.

[ladyattis]

Set Data = D.
Element password = p.

{ p E D | p != D} Translation: password is an element of the set Data such that it is not the set itself. :3  So if they got your data, they got your password.

-- Brede

[wtfk]

Set Data = D.
Element password = p.

{ p E D | p != D} Translation: password is an element of the set Data such that it is not the set itself. :3  So if they got your data, they got your password.

-- Brede

Oh gees...I'm not stupid.  My point is, I'm using the security to protect the password.  I don't care if it also protects the data.

[ladyattis]

You can't protect the password so long as you use their wifi port. They can capture all the data, even the password, it may be encrypted it is entered, but encryption in itself is not absolutely safe. Thus my point remains, don't use a wifi spot you don't know jack about.

-- Brede

[error]

I'm not evil, I just know how to do things.