Unsecure Wi-Fi

BlueAngel

Hi,
I'm from germany and since some month I'm living in ireland.
When I travel through the country, I often notice unsecure Wi-Fi for Internetaccess. I'm sitting in the car and can use any network.

In germany it's not allowed to run an unsecure Wi-Fi. When someone uses my unsecure network and visit illegal websites, I will have the problem because I don't know who it was. I will be punished like I visited these websites for myself.

How is it in ireland?



regards
BlueAngel

JMcCR

afaik there is no law in Ireland to govern this.
It is up to each individual to secure their network although some ISP's will deliver their routers with security enabled.

seamus

There is no law in Ireland which requires you to secure your network, however accessing someone's unsecure network is illegal in itself as it is accessing a computer system or network without authorisation which is an offence in Ireland.

In reality, many places (such as bars and cafes) will leave their networks open for customers to use - the cost of broadband being a minor one and you can filter and shape traffic so that nobody can hog or abuse the open network.

In terms of accessing illegal websites, the court would need to be able to pin down the person who is accessing these websites, and not just the network from where they were accessed. This would require the person's computer to be seized and forensically examined to prove that they were the one who accessed the illegal site.

The service provider (either an actual provider or an unwitting one) is a conduit for information and cannot be held liable for any content uploaded or downloaded by users of their service. This however does not exclude them from acting on information where they are given notice that a user is using their service to access illegal content or perform illegal activities.