I'm connected on someone else's wireless connection...

wrafter

I pressed the wireless on button on my laptop, disconnected my DSL router and voila, there was a connection I could tap into. "Unsecured Wireless Network - This network is configured for open access." I'm sitting in Barcelona, Spain right now.

In fact there are two, but I've only used the one to date. It's the stronger signal with a speed ranging between 5.5 and 11MBPs.

Am I leaving myself vulnerable to data theft by doing what I'm doing?

Am I leaving myself vulnerable to a virus doing what I'm doing?

If this were in Ireland would doing what I'm doing be illegal?

Am I surfing on a connection that someone has intentionally left open, or that someone just hasn't plugged properly - is there any way for me to know?

And is there any way for me to identify where this connection is coming from, or what its source is?

Curious about this...

Random

You shouldn't leave yourself open to any sort of data theft once you have a proper firewall configured and no open Windows shares.

Capt'n Midnight

If someone's front door is open, and the doormat says "welcome" that doesn't mean you can wander into a strangers house. If you were to download kiddie porn though their connection it could cause problems - 32 people arrested/implicated in the UK have commited suicide.. at least one other person whose life has been ruined has the police agree that some of the images were downloaded before he got the PC (14 day trial by previous customer). So leaching someones internet connection is non-trivial since it involves a certain amount of defacto Identidy theft.

The ESSID should be visible so you could tell the AP name.
TRACERT www.boards.ie
will ID the internet IP - and probably the ISP by the name of the first router. You can look up the IP on whois.com to see the ISP too. you can go to www.grc.org "shields up" to see the internet facing address.

wrafter

Capt'n Midnight, points taken. I'm just curious about the thing, and mean no harm, I'm still running my own DSL as its much faster and this is little more than a novelty for me right now. Plus I'm moving house in two weeks time so...

I've done as you've suggested re GRC Shields UP and received back an IP addy, router and ISP name.

(Remainder of this message deleted as I realise that GRC site provides me with answers to what I was asking.)

Thanks.

dub45

wrafter wrote:

I'm sitting in Barcelona, Spain right now.

.............................. It's the stronger signal with a speed ranging between 5.5 and 11MBPs.

.................................

Curious about this...

I am very curious about bb in Barcelona given the speeds you quote!!

Any chance of tellings us a bit more about whats available?

aphex™

If you sign into some website without SSL (boards.ie!), somebody could get your password etc. They could look at everything you are doing on it right now, without WEP.

Snaga

dub45 wrote:

I am very curious about bb in Barcelona given the speeds you quote!!

Any chance of tellings us a bit more about whats available?

Thats the speed hes getting to the wireless access point, not his download speeds.

wrafter

aphex&#8482 wrote:

If you sign into some website without SSL (boards.ie!), somebody could get your password etc. They could look at everything you are doing on it right now, without WEP.

@aphex

This was my concern. Do I have a valid concern?

Is this message: "Unsecured Wireless Network - This network is configured for open access." a standard windows message, or does it specifically mean that this network was set up to be accessible to all?

@dub45

Well, let me see. I'm on DSL from Telefonica for which I pay EUR41 plus 16% vat per month. I haven't had a connection down since about June of 2003. My connection speed is stated to be 512k/128k. Let me log onto some speed test site or other... let's try this one: http://www.intel.com/personal/computing/emea/eng/do_more/broadband/speed_test.htm - over three runs my average speed was 306.7kbps.

Let me swap over to the wireless in the sky connection I've been speaking about. Hmmm, I'm getting around 180kbps with this.

How does this compare speed-wise with access in Ireland, for a similar charge in the case of my paid-for DSL; and for access via wireless in my latter example?

aphex™

wrafter wrote:

@aphex

Is this message: "Unsecured Wireless Network - This network is configured for open access." a standard windows message, or does it specifically mean that this network was set up to be accessible to all?

It's not clear. What is clear is they've taken no steps to secure it from other people using it. Thats all.

What is also clear is that if i sat down with my laptop in the vicinity of the network i would be able to run a program and look at every single thing you're doing on the internet, decode all the pages you look at. It's like having a private conversation in a room with 3 other people, and you're all at either end, shouting at each other.

But who is to say somebody is bothered looking at what you're doing?

BTW the internet prices are about the same here, for the same DSL connection you have.