Stealing the internet! O.o

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blueren

blueren

Forerunner
Okay.. This is to clarify some doubts of a friend of mine.

He says he can access internet in his laptop cos it picks up an unprotected wifi signal in his room.

1) If he uses it, is there any way that he can get caught?
2) How does he figure out who the ISP is and what plan its running under
 
if the wifi spot is open then it is the fault of the owner/admin of the wifi.

it is not stealing technically if he has kept it unsecured.

yes the admin will know he is accessing but no legal action can be taken as long is hot spot is Open unsecured.

To find out ISP.. go to SPEED TEST FROM SPEEDTEST.IN ... it will let you know the ISP
 
I am no lawyer, But Its illegal to use other's persons wireless network even if its unsecured. IIRC.Its not easy to locate who is using your wifi.But if you get caught its easy to be proved by matching MAC.MAC address of network card which is unique to every computer.

Also, open wifi is a great way of getting hacked because other person might be sniffing all your data like your passwords, which sites you visits etc. you never know. you can identify ISP by check IP address. however, its not possible to know about billing plan.
 
I used to get Airtel unsecured wifi signals in my room for 6 months.

Since the router is unsecured, try accessing it. The password will also be the default ones.

In my case i was able to access the router and get the number.

Called up airtel and found the plan to be unlimited.....

I used it for 6 months to download everythin i wanted ...
 
Illegal. I doubt if the owner is knowledgeable when it comes to computers, BUT lets just say tomorrow there is a crime committed from that unsecured wifi connection and the cybercell of the police starts investigating, you can be tracked down, how?

1. They check the originating IP.

2. Track down the unsecured wifi owner.

3. Check router logs and see your MAC ID.

4. Contact your laptop brand to run a check on what system was sold with that specific mac ID.

5. Get your personal details.

6. Track you down.

Before you say anything, our coppers are well equipped and possess the knowledge to do this.

But that's rarely ever going to happen, I had been using an unsecured wifi/ap for sometime, I just made it a point not to do any heavy downloading off it. Even though it was a 2mbps connection.
 
Hmm.. Well I guess its pretty safe to access gmail/fb. Wish I had some free wifi too! I'm already overshooting my free usage limit.
 
Well i sourced my lappy from China 4 years back.

How are they gonna trace me apart from checking every single computer in the vicinity...
 
Its illegal, but then again, fault of the owner/admin of the network.

There is software that can provide the approximate lcoations of Wireless Devices. I was using it a coupla months ago to see which of my neighbors' wifi networks were on during a power cut. Its called Wiviz and comes with DDWRT v24 firmware.

Looks like this

http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/1464/wiviz.jpg

Also, MAC IDs can always be spoofed.

As for the ISP, yeah, Speedtest.net mentioned earlier should do just fine.
 
blueren said:
So is there any way that the unauthorized user can be shielded? Or at least stay unknown?
Click to expand...

all the ways for hiding that are illegal...

but again.. if the hotsopt is Open then there is pretty much nothing the admin can do to prove it illegal.
just beware and do not access anything where you have to personal info and authentication info.
 
blueren said:
Okay.. This is to clarify some doubts of a friend of mine.

He says he can access internet in his laptop cos it picks up an unprotected wifi signal in his room.

1) If he uses it, is there any way that he can get caught?
2) How does he figure out who the ISP is and what plan its running under
Click to expand...
apart from those questions, he (if its really a friend you are asking for, and not yourself :P) should also worry about the fact that the person whose connection he is leaching on can also snoop into all his web traffic..
 
shantanugoel said:
apart from those questions, he (if its really a friend you are asking for, and not yourself :P)
Click to expand...

No, its not me. I have a desktop with a wired ethernet and no wireless. I don't see any point in me pretending to be my friend leaching! :P Its just net, not some gurl ;)

My friend lives in a apartment.
 
madnav said:
all the ways for hiding that are illegal...
Click to expand...
Think of accessing your (blocked) favorite sites at work say. all they see is you going to some proxy site but anything more would depend if they use packet inspectors.

madnav said:
but again.. if the hotsopt is Open then there is pretty much nothing the admin can do to prove it illegal.
Click to expand...
If the traffic is logged an unknown ID could be logged as well as transactions it makes. So there you have a record of someone on the network.

What i'm not sure of is whether this presence is illegal or not :huh:

If he's just 'browsing' as he says then there is no problem, but if he's logging traffic then its another matter altogether. So i think what Gaurish said below applies.

Gaurish said:
But Its illegal to use other's persons wireless network even if its unsecured.
Click to expand...
 
You can keep using the internet if your conscience allows. But just because he left his wifi unsecured doesn't give you a right to use it.
 
Just remembered, 3 years back, I used to use one Net cafe's wifi signal for downloading. He was new in networking, and didn't know that his wifi is unsecure :bleh:. The best thing was we used to sit in one hotel in front of that cafe only :)

I downloaded lots of stuff from there before I had a good broadband connection. Now I don't feel the need of stealing someone's internet connection. That's bad habit actually. :bleh: :no:
 
Spoof your mac id and you are set, there are many free mac spoofing tools for windows on the interweb.
 
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