Comments for Is the WiFi connection provided by my landlord safe, and if not, how should I protect myself?

Comment from Leo on 2008-05-05

2008-05-05T19:49:48Z

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Excellent question, and good on you for wanting to do things
right. Here's a new article that describes what I'd do:
http://ask-leo.com/how_do_i_protect_users_on_my_network_from_each_other.html

Thanks,

Leo

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A comment on: Is the WiFi connection provided by my landlord safe, and if not, how should I protect myself?

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Comment from Eric Goodman on 2008-05-01

2008-05-01T13:39:30Z

I am the "landlord" (NOT the one in the article above). I don't know how to look at my "tenant's" data, but how do I protect myself from my tenant and for that matter someone in another apartment or someone just driving by the apartment building? According to my tenant, there are 8 different networks registering on his laptop (including mine).

Because my tenant shares the cost of the connection with me, I feel I have to protect the both of us from "problems."

I have a Linksys Wireless-G 2.4 MHz Broadband Router. I am wired directly to the router and my tenant uses the wireless connection. The router itself has a password on it and you need to enter an encryption key to gain access to the network to which my router is attached. Thanks, ERIC

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A comment on: Is the WiFi connection provided by my landlord safe, and if not, how should I protect myself?

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Comment from bigjohnny on 2008-03-23

2008-03-24T01:40:29Z

I try to use WiFi as little as possible and never use my credit card info online if I can avoid it. If you need reason to, check out some clips from a TV show that demonstrates how unscrupulous people can watch your WiFi and steal your credit card info. I can't post links here, so, search youtube for wifi and real hustle.

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A comment on: Is the WiFi connection provided by my landlord safe, and if not, how should I protect myself?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
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Comment from Kevin Pacheco on 2008-03-22

2008-03-22T10:35:11Z

Aside from Leo's points, this rings lots of alarm bells for me.

I don't know where the person asking the question lives, but I did notice a mention of "house" (as opposed to an apartment building) and a total of three tenants, including himself.

I live in southern Brooklyn where unscrupulous practices by landlords are sadly not uncommon. I can easily envision the inquirer's (apparently small-time) landlord sharing a residential broadband with multiple households without permission of the underlying ISP, which is surely a violation of the ISP's terms of use. (After all, the ISP wants to sell broadband to individual households, so they stand to lose revenue in a situation like this.)

There are three other problems here:

First, if the underlying ISP is a cable provider, even people who connect directly to the cable network can suffer slowdowns during peak hours In fact, this can also happen with DSL, even though DSL connections are supposedly not shared with neighbors. (Google [brooklyn verizon dsl peak slowdowns] for an proof of this). Now you are talking about sharing a single connection which is subject to a "double slowdown" if the other tenants are hitting the Wi-Fi connection hard.

The second problem is that, should anything go wrong with the connection, if it should go down completely, let's say, you have additional layers of complication in getting the problem solved. You can't call the underlying ISP directly, and the landlord might have better things to do than deal with Internet connectivity problems. Sure, if the landlord lives in the house and uses the connection himself, it's in his best interest to get such problems solved, but what if he's out of town or something when this happens?

Finally, there is the recently-reported case of Roderick Vosburgh, whose home was raided last year in an FBI sting involving posted hyperlinks that purported to be illegal videos of minors having sex. Vosburgh was found guily of attempting to download child pornography and faces three to four years in prison. A CNET article about this case mentions the following:

QUOTE:

The defendant in [another similar] case, Travis Carter, suggested that any of the neighbors could be using his wireless network. (The public defender's office even sent out an investigator who confirmed that dozens of homes were within Wi-Fi range.)

But the magistrate judge ruled that even the possibilities of spoofing or other users of an open Wi-Fi connection "would not have negated a substantial basis for concluding that there was probable cause to believe that evidence of child pornography would be found on the premises to be searched." Translated, that means the search warrant was valid.

END QUOTE

So, it I were you, I would absolutely, positively get my own Internet connection and steer clear of the Wi-Fi deal completely.

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A comment on: Is the WiFi connection provided by my landlord safe, and if not, how should I protect myself?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
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