One of my neighbours has an unsecured router...

mrk

mrk

mrk

Man of Honour
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...All I know is it's someone called CARRIE going by the listed DHCP local clients table on her Belkin router (yes this was also let unpassworded...) so would it be correct of me to change the wireless SSID to "PASSWORD IS CARRIE'S PC NAME" then set the password to her PC name?

I'd rather be a good neighbour than allow their wifi to be used by randoms!
 
I can see it now.... "Good Samaritan prosecuted under Computer Misuse Act" lol

Seriously, I'd just leave it. I know you have the best intentions, there is a very long shot that it could backfire on you.
 
I'd use it as a way to get into her knickers but then that's just me.
 
Tap on her door and tell her if you are on talking terms - something along the lines of you were having wireless problems and whilst investigating you saw her SSID and thought you should tell her that she is open to anyone and everyone, even say you can help if needed.

Better to be neighbourly openly that trying to do it through the back door.
 
Well I don't know who it is you see else I'd have gone to their house to let them know :p I know it cannot be far due to the fairly average signal strength but I'm not going round random houses close by asking "Hi, are you CARRIIE???!"

There's be absolutely no way for anyone to track it back to me either since I'm connected wirelessly and I've cleared the router's log :p

Should I secure her with WPA or not...hmmm!

It's just the thought that if someone with bad intentions found their network and changed all the passwords I'd feel bad not doing anything about it!
 
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Hmm that probably won't work as all the characters may not be visible on their screen :S
 
You could drive round with your laptop/PDA and triangulate the location of the house using GPS and the relative signal strengths at various locations.

Or you could just leave it, wireless security is fairly obvious these days - any basic PC intro mag will tell you that now.

They're useful in an emergency.
 
The best bet is to leave it be:
1)If you change the SSID you may break the connection for anything else she has running on the WLAN.
2)You might end up looking a right dork if you knock at the door and say "Hi Carrie, I was just checking my wireless and noticed you haven't setup a WPA-AES connection on your wireless LAN, would you like me to fix it for you?", she'd probably slam the door on your face and have a restraining order placed on you in no time.
3)Messing with other peoples wireless connections is illegal, regardless of your intentions.
 
BloodyL said:
2)You might end up looking a right dork if you knock at the door and say "Hi Carrie, I was just checking my wireless and noticed you haven't setup a WPA-AES connection on your wireless LAN, would you like me to fix it for you?", she'd probably slam the door on your face and have a restraining order placed on you in no time.
Click to expand...

Lmao :D
 
Theres a bunch of unsecured wireless networks near me, including a printer server (yes it does accept printing requests and no it hasn't been secured since it was abused*). Personally I just leave them unless I happen to know who owns the network and then I ask them about it - generally they weren't aware and aren't interested in it being secured because they don't understand whats going on and aren't aware of the dangers.

* and no it (really) wasn't me who sent 20 copies of an A4 sized porn picture to it.
 
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