Morally Wrong?

Greetings Friends:


I have had a great deal of time on my hands lately, as I closed my beloved resto. , and I have been finding reasons to slow down my spending lifestyle. I live in a very urban area (Atlanta).

I am able (without wardriving) to use WIFI internet for free via my USB Net adapter. I live in proximity to 12 free WIFI connections, Starbucks (in my bldg). among them, and I am able to surf without a Bell South bill.

I do not drink five dollar espresso's, yet I appreciate the services.

Is it so wrong to cancel my "paid" service?


:D

That depeds on what their terms of service are.

If they advertise a free AP with no conditions go ahead.

If however they state it's for customers only, then perhaps you shouldn't

Steve

ultimately a question of personal ethics, is it not?

I'm reminded of Mallrats...
<Brodie> My grandmother always said, "Why buy the cow when you get the sex for free?"
<T.S.>She did?
<Brodie> All the time. Course she became a lesbian on her 60th birthday, but that's beside the point.

Well, you get the point... ;)

[edit] BTW - it's also a question of how much money you make - personally, I'm trying to decide whether I should pay for another month's Internet service or my car insurance bill... right now Internet service is way ahead... :D [/edit]

Thanks for the response Steve, here is the deal.

I buy some Java (not computer oriented), as well as pastries and crappy Starbucks bagels on a regular basis for my gf. from the shop in question. So as far as SB is concerned I do not feel bad.

I have 12+ profiles I have the abillty to "take advantage of". These are the connections I have guilt for. They are the direct result of sloppy "[email protected]" a guy and a van setup my network ppl.


My guilt is there.

:rolleyes:

I am not cracking ppl. just surfing on their backs.

Quote:

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Originally posted here by wiskic10_4
ultimately a question of personal ethics, is it not?

I'm reminded of Mallrats...
<Brodie> My grandmother always said, "Why buy the cow when you get the sex for free?"
<T.S.>She did?
<Brodie> All the time. Course she became a lesbian on her 60th birthday, but that's beside the point.

Well, you get the point... ;)

---

Good point. Thus my original question.

At times morals need to be reinforced.

:cool:


In the 90's I infiltrated my own project, without orifice's.

http://www.onion-router.net/


Back in the day they had a "lobby" where users would login at a central point. The only problem being that their IP's were clearly visible to the world.

Sound like today's WIFI> ? With some skill?

I am not advocating Cracking, I just think a more serious approach needs to be taken regarding the general public. **** I am a Chef! hehe

Everytime a "Van" full of Geeksquaders sets up a network in someones house, it is a perfect setup for blackhats.

Wanna login to a DSL connection>? WOW! Bellsouth users are issued the last 7 digits of the users phone# as a default password.......................... How many mom&pops change it??

Case&Point.

Sometimes it's difficult not to make use of these things.

I once has an annoying co. spamming me & I found out that I could null session their windows printer share.

I have to confess to printing out a large number of sheets of paper not so politely requesting them to stop sending me spam.

Probably not legal, but it stopped the spam.

It's still not something I'm proud of though. It just makes you feel a little less good about yourself.

Galdron, if you're worried, don't do. It will only get to you in the end.

OTOH, you are a customer of Starbucks, so....

Steve

The one concern I would have with using an open hotspot is that if you can get on it... so can anyone else. They don't have any security or encryption enabled... so all your traffic is available for anyone within proximity to sniff.

I use open hotspots when I'm away from my home... but I still VPN into my home connection for the added security. I don't want everyone knowing the contents of my email and what sites I visit. etc.

If you do decide to use the open hotspots.. maybe think about using some type of encrypted proxy. tor comes to mind. However, I'm not sure if traffic on tor is encrypted through the first hop or not... you may want to do some experimenting.

Quote:

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Is it so wrong to cancel my "paid" service?

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Hell no! I use to work for these people. If I was you I would. Why pay for something that you can get for free? ;)

you can rationalize to you hearts content but it's not using it the way it was intended so ethecially it's wrong.....but if i had no choice, as in i really need to cut done expenses to get by, i'd do it as long as there were no legal ramifications which might possibly degrade my situation even further, but it would still be wrong.

when I moved in to my last apartment the folks at SBC were being jerks about installing DSL and told me it would be over a month before I could get it.

That is when I noticed a coffee shop that was down stairs that offered free wireless from their ZSpot connection. I checked the connection signal with the laptop and it showed a strong signal to me... so then I went downstairs and bought a coffee. I struck up a conversation with the owner of the shop and I explained my situation with the DSL connection and that I could get a signal from my apartment. I asked him if it was ok if I piggybacked off of him for a while, at least until I got my DSL, so I could keep up to date on emails, news, etc. He readily agreed because we were neighbors and he /wanted/ people to use his connection. The only thing he asked was to keep my surfing legit, which I had no problem with.

So my moral is, why don't you just ask the people at SB? Or if you can locate one of the other open connections you might want to ask them.

As for SBC I kicked them to the curb in favor of Comcast who was out there in a day to hook me up :)


/my current company operates open WiFi all over the place, about 150 locations around the country at the moment and we invite everyone that is in signal reach to use it...

Being a poor college student and also having a daughter I try to save a penny where ever possible. I have been using the same wifi spot know for over 2 years. It was active when I went to jail and apprently the baby momma never changed it.

I don't think there is a place within city limits you couldn't find a spot.


So I will play the devil's advocate here and say I think it is perfectly fine to use the hotspots as long as your not using it for illegitimate uses. And don't give me that "You wouldn't steal a snickers from Walmart" argument because it is different. There is not any /physical/ theft here. Its not like he dling the whole damn starwars series and hogging the bandwidth. He is using for personal minor use and does not plan on doing it for long. Only till his monetary situation looks a little better.

My 2 cents boss.


Ryan

Bottom line: If it is offered as a free, complimentary service, you are welcome to use it. Making it a permanent dodge for paying for your own access is sketchy and probably a bit tacky.

If it is a neighbor who just doesn't get it and you can hop a ride through, no that is not morally defensible. If someone else is paying the frieght and you don't have explicit permission to ride along, that is stealing.

Just take the cup away and drink it *very* slowly...

i2c

You get the signals from your house without any cantennaes or performance enhancing equipment? Which that means they are saturating your living space with wifi signals? I call that trespassing, and that means they owe it to you. If they really care, you'll see WEP crop up on your hotspots fairly quickly. Besides it could be a good alybye for those music pirates next door. I keep my wifi wep free just so that if the man comes knockin, i have something to fight with. My neighbors can sip my bandwidth to their hearts content. Besides, if they really piss me off, I can always filter them out. So go nuts.

A word to the wise however, I wouldn't go to my banks website or anything on it. who knows if they've got it tapped (like me hehe), also if they get pissy, they might be able to track you down but email addresses or whatnot.

While the misc one around your house are morally wrong in my opinion if you are frequently paying starbucks I don't see any issues in using theirs.

Now that i got the opinion out of the way why not hunt one of these AP's down and proposition the user. Hey i didnt know if you were aware but your wireless network is wide open and anyone can see what you are doing. I can encrypt it for you for free if you will let me use your internet connection?

or try something else along those lines. Sell your services for the cost of access. As long as you look respectable when you proposition them one of them should ok it.