[geeks] Unsecured Wifi connections now illegal in part of India.

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 12:34:57PM +0100, Sheldon T. Hall wrote:

>The DSL boxes handed out by the major providers here in France all seem to
>come with WEP (at least) turned on.

Here (Israel) they come wide open. People are not told by the vendors
to secure them.

There is (was) a Spanish company that sold routers with built in free
access that allowed you to share your connection. The free users were 
isolated from the owner of the connection. 

The idea was that you could get access "points" by allowing people to
use your connection for use on other people's connections.
You could use these "points" instead of cash at commercial locations that
subscribed to the plan, or get cash for other people using your connection.

BT (British Telecom) was selling people routers with this feature in them,
but turned off. 

I started a company to provide free, advertiser supported WiFi throughout
Israel and later the world, but it folded when the City of Jerusalem announced
they would have a free, taxpayer supported WiFi network throughout the city
and my investor disappeared. 

The network never materialized beyond a few isolated access points as the
city council wanted to use the money for frivolous things, like schools
and playgrounds for the kids of people who did not own computers.

>I rather preferred the old Internet, actually, back when security, spam, and
>other bad stuff just wasn't a problem.

Me too.

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM