UK ISP Claims It Will Disconnect Any Customers With Open WiFi
from the but-will-it-really? dept
Apparently the UK ISP Karoo has changed its terms of service to note that it will disconnect customers if it discovers they have an open WiFi access point. This isn't all that surprising, though it isn't particularly reasonable. When WiFi first came on the scene a few years back, there were a few ISPs that claimed the same thing -- though their reasoning was that they were afraid people with open WiFi were illegally "sharing" the connection with neighbors. Hell, there were some ISPs that wanted to charge you per computer you connected to a broadband connection. However, as WiFi became common, most ISPs dropped those restrictions, so it is interesting to see them coming back. The reason for cutting off open WiFi users is unclear -- and it's likely that Karoo will claim security reasons -- but TorrentFreak wonders if it has anything to do with the entertainment industry, which is sick of losing cases after people point out that, thanks to an open WiFi, it could be anyone that had used the connection. Either way, it seems like a good reason to find a new ISP, if your ISP is going to get involved in how you set up your local network.
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Filed Under: disconnect, open wifi, uk, wifi
Companies: karoo
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Most people are going to choose the easiest to implement security method, which will be WEP - very easily cracked in a couple of minutes. More tech-savvy users will probably jump ship to a competitor who doesn't try to tell people how they can use the service they're paying for.
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Haha
It isn't open, but you can still easily share it.
Simple.
Or, perhaps along the lines of a regular AC we see from time to time:
Not 1 cent?
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Re: Haha
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Re: Haha
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Remember When...
Later, cable television companies also charged for each television connected to cable, even if they were cable ready.
I am unaware of any companies that still do this in the United States.
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Re: Remember When...
Likewise, cable companies have taken offense when users add power adapters to boost the power (needed when splitting the line for extra connections).
I'm in the wrong country to be concerned about the actions of Karoo, but if it were being enforced by my ISP, I'd bail and find another ISP. Whether it's your phone, cable line or broadband connection...what you do with it once it's on your property is your business.
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Re: Re: Remember When...
Whether it's your phone, cable line or broadband connection...what you do with it once it's on your property is your business.
As long as you are not overloading the system, I agree.
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Eh
You are maintaining a very aggressive and silly belief of possession of a service.
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Re: Remember When...
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Re: Remember When...
When phones with electronic ringers, and electronic phones that needed a current draw to operate came along, detection was not that easy anymore.
It is likely the inability to detect the number of phones accurately and enforce the rule is what made it go away.
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ISPs
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Re: ISPs
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Eat all you want!
Stupid problems caused by stupid systems (which were created to cater stupid people).
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When an ISP sells you a certain internet connection package they can rarely maintain the promised connection speed 100%. This has a lot to do with the statistics of popular Quality of Service technics. To cut a long story short, they simply can't provide 100% of the bandwith to 100% of the costumers 100% of the time.
Now when people use up your extra bandwith that you wouldn't otherwise use, you're basically "demanding" the promised connection speed more of the time. So they're not trying to help you or anyone else (what's in it for them?) - they simply want to keep their current pricing scheme where you pay for something you can't actually get, in a world where mobile phones, subnotebooks, etc' are making WiFi demand more taxing on them.
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No, the only way in which this makes any sense is to remove the "it wasn't me" excuse when somebody's "caught" downloading (I put caught in quotes because the evidence in such cases is pitifully weak and proves nothing to anyone technically minded). Since ISPs are being pressured to implement a 3 strikes rule, this rule is being put into place to pre-empt the inevitable "my router was unlocked, I had no idea what was going on" defense, true or not.
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How many of you people saying that this is bad would appreciate your neighbor using the service of your electrical outlets and running up your power bill?
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Even worse would be cutting off my electricity because I have an exterior outlet that isn't locked - after all, regardless of whether anyone actually has used it, theoretically they could (which is a bit more like the case in discussion).
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That's a good example. As long as I'm paying for it I don't want the electric company telling me what I can and can't do with my electricity. If I want to invite a neighbor over and let him plug his laptop computer, for example, into one of my electric outlets I should be able to do so.
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To be honest, I can sort of sympathize with their point of view. If you provided an unlimited supply of, say, candy to one person for a a flat rate per month, and they in turn hand out that candy to a whole bunch of their friends, you would seriously be losing money on the deal, because it's costing you more to fulfill the one contract, and you're not getting anymore contracts because the other people are getting the candy for free.
While I don't think it's right to charge per computer, I do think that restricting one service subscription to a single household is a reasonable request. However, I also think that such a request should be stated clearly in the terms of service, and should be subject to the honor system, not buried in the fine print and litigated over. When you tell people not to do something, they just want to do it all the more. On the other hand if you tell them to do something (secure their access point), and explain the benefits of doing so (keep hackers out), then people will be much more likely to oblige. THAT is the way to handle this situation.
As for enforcement of the no-unsecure-wifi rule, the only way I could think of for them to enforce it would be to basically start wardriving, running around neighborhoods with wireless antennas looking for open access points. However, even that isn't foolproof, because it's difficult to figure out exactly which household an open signal is coming from, and I'm willing to bet that such an endeavor would cost far more than what they're potentially using by people having open access points. If they try and come up with some silly utility that you have to run to see what kind of connection you're on, I can guarantee they're going to have a lot of people canceling service.
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Re: Seeing Who the Customer is
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Your strawman is on fire....
You analogy is completely flawed.
I don't let my neighbors use my electricity because I pay by the kwh, and it would cost me more.
You are not entitled to tell me I have to lock up my resources. You can certainly do as you wish with yours.
My bandwidth during any given minute of the day is limited only by my connection speed, anything I don't use up to that limit is WASTED and I can never recover it, it's GONE. _I_paid_for_it_, but I lost it to disuse.
Allowing my friends or whoever to use what I am not using so that it does not go to waste is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
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That's all very well, if people are doing it accidentally.
I appreciate being able to access Wifi when I'm out with my laptop, so I do others the same courtesy, why shouldn't I? Because you don't want people mooching off my service? I've paid for it, and if the ISP isn't happy with the bandwidth being used, perhaps they shouldn't offer unlimited bandwidth.
I'm not with this company, but if I was I'd be quite glad if they cut me off, so I could find a more reasonable ISP without paying an early-termination charge.
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Who the hell..
I live in the UK and i've never heard of them!
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Re: Who the hell..
(I also live in the UK, and had to look it up.)
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ISP's Listen!!!
Quit trying to milk customers for 20year old tech.
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the way it is
I have my network's wifi secured; I started at WPA2, but now have user and machine authentication (radius ftw!).
I also have an open AP in the DMZ (so visitors can't see the rest of the network); it's a low-power 'b' antenna on the most crowded channel. I put on a DNS trap that sends new devices to a click-through page: "This connection is low bandwidth, high latency, insecure, and sometimes unavailable for no particular reason. I can read the traffic you send and I like flipping the power switch just for the heck of it. Click here to continue."
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I do agree that all ISP's should switch to metered billing. That would solve all the problems. Then it's technically in their interest for you to share it as they make more.
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I can see it now
Early termination fee ?
hmmm, this is going to end well.
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Another ISP?
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WPA/WEP
-L
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