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So I've recently walked into a predicament. My internet becomes really slow during the afternoon hours, and it's been so bad that I've ended up piggybacking one of my neighbor's unprotected wireless during those hours that I need to get some online work done.
Now I personally don't mind other people piggybacking off mine, if they ask nicely and don't hog up all the bandwidth, but I still have a simple WEP encryption just for shits and giggles. I'm not intentionally trying to access his/her network, so during those times that I'm using it, I barely think about it.
However, if this person happens to confront me, I won't have any problem paying for my mis-use of the wireless if he/she so asks. I know that I shouldn't have used it to begin with.
So here's a little question for you guys: aside from the questionable illegality of "stealing" wireless, what moral qualms, if any, do you guys have with piggybacking wireless?
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I think its fine if they aren't fucking with my network. While it's not morally right, its not wrong enough to not do it hehe. I do have a password on mine though, just cuz i dont wan't anyone fuckin with my network.
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Law of evolution. PW your damn wireless if you don't want anyone on it.
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It seems like everyone these days has a protected connection =(.
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If it's unprotected then I have no moral qualms about using it :x
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it's fine if they dont password protect it. It's like having no walls on your house, cant get mad for people walkin in
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On October 19 2010 12:23 Divinek wrote:
it's fine if they dont password protect it. It's like having no walls on your house, cant get mad for people walkin in
if your house didn't have walls it wouldn't be a house to begin with
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I'd say it's more like leaving your house unlocked with an obvious sign that reads "UNLOCKED," and somebody walks in and uses your bathroom/kitchen without damaging anything and without you even knowing. And perhaps they have a camouflage of sorts.
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Usually when you steal something, you're taking away a resource and redistributing it to yourself. In this case, let's see what's going on:
By using the person's router, you are slightly increasing the load on the device, very insignificantly decreasing its lifespan and increasing power consumption (of course, the whole thing is still way less than a light bulb). Also you would be increasing the average and peak latency and reducing the available throughput by a little. In terms of overall spectrum consumption from a government or technical perspective, there's not really a difference. **Okay, there may be, but I'm not getting into that unless somebody really wants to hear why.
As long as you don't do anything illegal or hog the bandwidth, all the costs to the user are pretty negligible. It's leeching, but there are probably bigger things in the world to worry about.
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I'm down with it because I don't misuse.
I'm also down with other people using mine, as long as they aren't abusing.
Though I feel it's probably wrong if you don't have consent. Otherwise, sharing is k IMO.
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Unless it burns when you- WAIT.
If anyone isn't password protecting their wireless network these days, the deserve to have strangers piggybacking on them. Also, if he/she isn't protecting their wireless, they're not gonna have the technical know how to figure out who's using it.
Plus you live in the US. Infinite monthly bandwidth. In Canada is you use more than 20/40/60/100 gigs of bandwidth a month you get charged 2 dollars a gig. Robbery :/
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On October 19 2010 13:10 Lexpar wrote:
Unless it burns when you- WAIT.
If anyone isn't password protecting their wireless network these days, the deserve to have strangers piggybacking on them. Also, if he/she isn't protecting their wireless, they're not gonna have the technical know how to figure out who's using it.
Plus you live in the US. Infinite monthly bandwidth. In Canada is you use more than 20/40/60/100 gigs of bandwidth a month you get charged 2 dollars a gig. Robbery :/
Hmm. I think it would be hard to go over like 20gig a month. Unless your downloading and watching videos on youtube like a monster. Like downloading Borderlands, Mass Effect 2, Sims 3 AND Civilization 5 in one month. On top of that, watching like 50 youtube videos a day.
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Is it that hard to use WPA or WPA2? Even WEP is sufficient.
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WPA2 is much much much harder to crack than a WEP key, but when you think about it, 99% of people who would want to steal your internet don't even know where to begin on cracking it, so it still serves it's purpose.
As for morals, I don't see any problems with someone "stealing" someone elses wireless internet connection. They obviously don't mind it THAT much if they didn't put a bloody password/authentication/encryption on it. If someone even tried to get mad at me I wouldn't give a shit; they're asking for it if they aren't going to put some kind of security measure on it. In that 5 minutes it took for him to knock on your door and tell you off, he could have set up some security measures.
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No, people do not deserve to have others piggybacking on their unprotected networks. Do people deserve to be robbed when they leave their door unlocked? That's not saying people shouldn't protect themselves, but they certainly don't "deserve" to be wronged for possible naivety. And piggybacking is definitely stealing. You are stealing the user's access to the internet for which the user pays a monthly fee. I mean, if it's your neighbor and you get along well with each other, its kind of like a friend borrowing something without asking. But strangers piggybacking on others is definitely immoral.
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If someone does protect their wireless then they are inviting you to use it. There is no moral issue here at all.
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On October 19 2010 15:38 Enervate wrote:
No, people do not deserve to have others piggybacking on their unprotected networks. Do people deserve to be robbed when they leave their door unlocked?
What kind of analogy is that? If his radio waves from his wireless router are strong enough to be picked up from within your house then by all means you should be able to take advantage of it. If someone fucking leaves a lawn mower in my backyard then hell yeah I'm going to be like "sweet, a fucking lawn mower" and use it. If the owner comes over to my house and starts giving me shit for using his lawn mower I'm gonna be like "well don't fucking leave your lawn mower in my back yard if you don't want me to use it." Radiowaves from wireless access points are emitted at the 2.4 and 5GHz range, which is a public band. Put some damn security or limit the antenna range on your wireless router if you don't want people using the signal you are transmitting through their house. There are reasons why it's not illegal to use a public signal, have you even thought of them?
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I can guarantee that if any of you lived in Australia you would be opposed to piggybacking, simply due to the rediculous download limits imposed upon us :S
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Why would you even feel guilty about using their wireless lol
Their fault they didn't spend 1 minute of their life setting up a password on it.
On the other hand, don't go around fucking with their router settings, changing the router passwords, etc. THAT's where it becomes a moral issue imo
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As long as you're not doing anything that would warrant a warning from the FBI or the FCC, I wouldn't care as long as StarCraft is playable.
I use other people's wifi on my Touch all the time; I don't see any reason to feel anything about it. If you don't put a freaking password on your network it's going to be used.
It's not stealing at all. A better analogy then "robbing someone whose door is unlocked" would be- you pay money every month to have a work of art over at your place. If you put it inside, only you can look at it. If you leave it outside, you have to walk outside to look at it and it's less convenient, and other people will look at it too. If you don't carry it inside, you can't blame people for looking at "your" art.
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On October 19 2010 16:09 CortoMontez wrote:
I can guarantee that if any of you lived in Australia you would be opposed to piggybacking, simply due to the rediculous download limits imposed upon us :S
Well, when your internet is powered by hamster wheels, it's just cruel to piggyback and make that poor hamster work even harder.
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On October 19 2010 12:21 Bereft wrote:
If it's unprotected then I have no moral qualms about using it :x
This sums it up for me. If it's an unprotected network, I don't feel bad using it for little things like browsing or chatting. Now if you're totally wrecking their connection uploading torrents or doing something illegal then that's not very ethical. But for normal internet use it's not too big a deal imo.
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EPT
