i fixed my friends computer and as payment he gave me a wifi pci router. niceeeeee. slow. but free! yay for unsecured networks!

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You do realise that if you do not have permission of the person whose network you are hacking into, you may be committing a criminal offence

Well that is the situation in the UK, not sure about the US

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im not hacking 0.o its an unsecured network. its free game.

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"I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details."
-Albert Einstein-

or so i thought.

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It is not Cracking ( Hacking is programming. A hacker is a programmer. A person who breaks into computers is a Cracker. Blame Hollywood for this word definition change in popular culture.) It is, essentially, unauthorized access.

hm. ill have to get to the bottom of it. you should read my new poem while i do :O huuuh?

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"I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details."
-Albert Einstein-

using someone else's unsecured wireles router to get internet access is the same as downloading music for free- it's technically illegal, but people think they are entitled to it.
of course, there is a sticker right on every wireless device that says that it must accept any "interference" that it encounters and the airwaves are technically public domain in the USA.. so anyone that isn't smart enough to shut off or otherwise secure the wireless part of their router is kinda sorta in a way unknowingly giving anyone access to their internet portal. kind of like leaving the keys in your unlocked Cadillac in a high crime neighborhood..

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The.. Best.. Thread..Ever...

Woo hoo, next time I find a car parked with the doors unlocked and the keys in it.

Free car!!!

(Wouldn't be illegal, would it?)

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not as long as i just sit in the car and enjoy the smell, not taking it away from the original owner

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"The purpose of life is not just to be happy; the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate. It is, above all to matter, to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all."

"I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details."
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It's theft.

If someone put a mains socket outside, say for their lawn mower - would you run your house of an extension lead from next-doors electricity?

Would you drill a hole thru the wall and heat your house with their gas?

Would you borrow their car, without asking, using their petrol, if the keys were in the door?

For all you know - they're carefully managing how much bandwidth they use so as not to go over some ISP limit - your useage might take them over that limit have their connection throttled, terminated, or incur extra charges.

Stealing bandwidth is THEFT. Stop it. Now.

You are a thief.

Ditto, and the term "hacker" came from the newsrooms, where reporters hacking away at their typewriters on into the night were known as "hackers." When programming came along, the term applied for the same reasons, just to a different venue.

In addition to breaking into computers, "cracking" also covers any form of illegally gaining access to networks, computers, or messages, encrypted or not. However, this term arose during WWII, mainly in Blechley Park, named after the code-breakers, or "crackers" as they were sometimes called.

Nev's right - using the term "hacker" to describe those who break into computers originated solely in the confines, ironically enough, of the news media.

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If we halt the ISS, all versions of Ares, and transport Orion and Altair aboard DIRECTv3's Jupiter family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, we just might make it back to the Moon by 2020.

Intelligence*: Using someone else's wireless internet
Stupidity: boasting about it on the internet.


* Yes, I know it's illegal.

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I need to dig out my copy of Neuromancer and see if this is true.

Stealing bandwidth is one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is you're requesting that someone's wireless network give you internet access and it's up to its owner to decide whether or not such requests will be granted. Someone with an unlimited usage connection might be fine with his neighbors using it too. He can always secure it if outside usage starts to interfere with his own.

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Nope, still theft.
I haven't seen any ISP agreement for home use that didn't explicitly forbid using the connection to provide access to outsiders.

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‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

pzkpfw's analogy of an unlocked car is a good one. You have to actually ask them, not just assume they're allowing you because they're not proactively stopping you.

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Your computer asks their computer for Internet access. You're not forcing your way in.

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Then if someone allows others to use his connection then he's in violation of his agreement. If someone steals something and gives it to me that doesn't mean that I stole it unless I know it's stolen and keep it anyway.

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what do you call a person that just breaks computers?

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-work in progress--

Yeah, and my hand asked their car door to let me in, and their car door did. I didn't force my way in.

It's the same thing, and it doesn't work either way.

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You moved the car door with your hand. That's using force.

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Nope, even in an unsecured network, you're still committing theft. Its on the books in the US, too. I read a story a couple months back where a man was arrested during a traffic stop. He was parked in front of someone's house checking his email on his laptop.

Bagged him for parking violations and unauthorized use of a computer.


Of course, the ultimate rule: Thou shalt not get caught.

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It's not against the law to leave your stuff unlocked. It is against the law to take stuff that doesn't belong to you.

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Does that mean if I walk past someone's house and can smell the flowers in his yard, I'm stealing?

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It's the same. There was a case I read about a few years back where someone in Florida (I believe) got a little jail time for poaching Wi-Fi.

Using an unsecured network isn't theft if you have the permission of the owner. I can think of several places in Guisborough that have unsecured 'hotspots' free for people to use. One of my friends also has a wireless router he lets his friends who live close use, although it does have a WEP key he has shared with them.

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It's true that our legal system is based on common law.

However, that does not mean that what is and is not legal has anything whatsoever to do with what anyone believes is common sense.

But what we are talking about here is hacking into a communications system, to wit the Wi-Fi system. Think about those criminals who literally hack into a telephone exchange to intercept calls in some elaborate fraud, hence hacking into a wifi system.

Incidentally when my brother visits a certain place in Washington State with his partner, they piggyback off of a neighbours wifi, with their permission. My brother said they did offer to pay something towards their neighbour's internet fee, but the neighbour declined.

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All your examples are cracking not hacking, though I know it's tilting at windmills to get people to understand.

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