That’s the ruling of a Dutch court presented with the bizarre case of of a student who’d “threatened to shoot down everyone at the Maerlant College in The Hague, a high school”, says PC World.

He’d posted his threat on 4chan.org “using a WiFi connection that he broke into”, it says, going on >>>

The student was convicted for posting the message and sentenced to 20 hours of community service, but he was acquitted of the WiFi hacking charges.

The Judge reasoned that the student didn’t gain access to the computer connected to the router, but only used the routers internet connection. Under Dutch law breaking in to a computer is forbidden.

In Holland, a computer is defined as a machine used for the storage, processing and transmission of data, states the post, adding:

“A router can therefore not be described as a computer because it is only used to transfer or process data and not for storing bits and bytes. Hacking a device that is no computer by law is not illegal, and can not be prosecuted, the court concluded.”

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PC World – Dutch Court Rules WiFi Hacking Is Now Legal, March 18, 2011

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

World War III will be a global information war with no division between civilian & military participation ~ Marshall McLuhan

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Consumers have bemoaned the dominance of the big three carriers for years, leading to complaints about limited choice and high prices. In recent years, however, the government has begun to map out a strategy to address the competitiveness concerns.

The 2008 spectrum auction opened the door to new competitors, with many launching over the past year.  Moreover, the prospect of removing foreign ownership restrictions is gaining traction and there are indications that additional spectrum will soon be made available.

While these changes have established a market with more providers, the ability for consumers to take advantage of greater competition remains a work-in-progress.

From a pricing perspective, the incumbent providers maintain important advantages, particularly the ability to bundle wireless, landline, Internet, and television services into a single package featuring discounted prices that any new entrant would be hard-pressed to match.

Beyond pricing, consumers face other barriers.  Many are locked into long-term contracts that far exceed the norm in other jurisdictions. Establishing term limits would require provincial intervention and would likely raise objections over interference with consumer choice.

The Quebec government recently implemented an alternative approach by establishing legal limits on cancellation fees.  The provincial consumer protection law now limits the fee to the actual discount received by the customer.  Moreover, if there was no inducement or discount to enter into a contract, the fee cannot exceed 10 per cent of the value of the unpaid services or $50, whichever is less.

Assuming consumers can get out of an existing contract, they still face the challenge of transferring or “porting” their number to their new provider.   In theory, this should be easy since Canada implemented wireless number portability, which allows consumers to keep their existing cellphone numbers as they change providers, in 2007.

However, a new report from the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services, which addresses consumer complaints about wireline and wireless services, finds that there are significant problems with portability in practice. The CCTS says it often receives complaints from consumers who have asked to port their number to a new provider, but encounter inaccurate billing or service errors along the way.

The report identifies a host of problems including providers submitting the wrong customer information or wrong dates for porting orders as well as numbers being ported without the correct services.  The CCTS notes that the mistakes often result in delays in porting the number or in billing errors, including customers being billed by both providers for the same service.

The problems associated with number portability are not easy for an individual consumer to address, since it is not always obvious whether the error lies with the old provider or the new one.  Regardless, the CCTS sternly notes that “when completing requests to port telephone numbers, service providers have an obligation to ensure a seamless transition and must therefore ensure that all related systems are accurate and up to date.”

Fostering a competitive wireless environment in Canada requires attention to both the provider and consumer perspectives.

New spectrum and removing foreign ownership restrictions should help increase provider choice, but there is work to be done by federal and provincial governments to ensure that consumers have the ability to take advantage of greater competition.

Michael Geist – Michael Geist’s Blog
[Geist is the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. He can be reached by email at mgeist @ uottawa dot ca]

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November, 2010

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

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Of course, the company’s entire business is predicated on taking without asking. So it was no big surprise when it finally emerged that for three years its Street View sneak view snoopmobiles had been secretly vacuuming up and storing unsecured WiFi data.

When it was caught, it strenuously denied it was doing this deliberately and knowingly. ‘Gosh, folks, it was just a mistake on the part of a lone engineer (or was it two?)!’ – it exclaimed, and still exclaims. ‘It was him (them?), not us.’

But there’s WiFi data gathering of another kind.

“Spotted. Per a post: all private wifi mapped! http://wigle.net/gps/gps/Map/onlinemap2/” – says a Reader’s Write, going on >>>

found this map of all wi-fi networks in north america, even mine is there.
You have to zoom out, scroll to where you live, then zoom in.

I see a lot of Bell SSID’s and MAC addresses in Ottawa :p

Seems to be some sort of google Android app collecting these, if I understood it correctly.

Further down another comment says “Also see: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r25060031-all-private-wifi-mapped-” and over at dslreports, among other posts is this, from cpb >>>

Hmm, I was thinking….

If we re-program all the wireless routers everywhere, with a custom firmware that would allow P2P like connection, using a small percentage of wifi bandwidth, wouldn’t we be able to create a wireless internet of sorts?

Plug a booster here and there and voila, wireless P2P internet.

hmmmmm.

Meanwhile, here’s the FAQ

What is This Thing For?

We consolidate location and information of wireless networks world-wide to a central database, and have user-friendly java, windows, and web applications that can map, query and update the database via the web.

We currently accept files in any of NetStumbler’s exported file formats, DStumbler’s text output, Kismet’s CWGD, XML, CSV, or GPS formats, Pocket Warrior’s text output, as well as via our online form.

To have your record removed from our database, or if you have any questions or suggestions, send an email to: WiGLE-admin[at]WiGLE.net or irc chat on #wigle at wigle.net:6667

Who are you people?

• arkasha worked on the java client (JiGLE) and is writing the palm client (PRInGLE) and windows/linux native client
• bobzilla works on the web/db (WiGLE), map generation (RiGLE), and the java client (JiGLE)
• uhtu works on the java client (JiGLE)
• thuddwhir wrote the vector-based map generation (SquiGLE)
• wos wrote the Mac OSX native client (TinGLE)

All are members of Mimezine.

How does triangulation work?

The “triangulation” is actually just an average of the latitudes and longitudes gathered using the signal strength (squared) as a weight. This assumes that signal strength will change at the inverse square of the distance. This is reasonable as long is you don’t get a one sided view of the network (IE only sample it on the west side) since it will be skewed in that direction. Perhaps a better way would be choosing a signal of 70 as being the ultimate, and every other point being a radius from 70 and trying to find where all the circles intersect, but we’ll see. This should be good enough for the real world for now.

How do I Get Started?

WiGLE.net is a submission-based catalog of wireless networks. Submissions are not paired with actual people; rather name/password identities which people use to associate their data. It’s basically a “gee isn’t this neat” engine for learning about the spread of wireless computer usage.

WiGLE concerns itself entirely with 802.11b networks right now, since it’s REALLY hard to deal with cellular networks, 802.11a is so hard to catch, and everything else is so small-share. 802.11b appears to be experiencing an explosive growth, and it’s neat to see it cover cities.

the first step in using WiGLE is to create a username for yourself. You don’t have to submit anything other than a made-up name and password, validation is immediate, and we will not contact you (unless you wanna chat on our message boards). This will give you access to our query engine and software downloads.

once you’ve done this, you’re free to send us wireless network traces (in any of our listed formats, usually pairings of wireless sample, names and network hardware addresses (for uniqueness), data/SNR triples and GPS coordinates) or enter networks manually. Note, your username gets “credit” for these, but of course some people don’t want their networks listed (various reasons), so we delist these immediately upon request. If you’re visiting us to ask for removal, just make an ID and ask about your network through the query page. Once you make a user id, you can look at the submissions statistics page to see how users stack up.

To view networks, you can 1.) ask the website, 2.) download one of our clients. The clients are particularly fun to look at, but require either a java-1.3-and-up machine (windows, sunOS, MacOS-X, linux, mostly) or a windows box, for the new windows-native prototype. This will superimpose “points” from a live query onto a map of an area. Maps can be downloaded in “packs” from our mapping engine and are installed simply by unzipping them into your client installation directory. Mappacks are created and served by-state-by-county, or in the case of large cities, by-state-by-city. If we haven’t generated a map for your area of interest yet, ask for it, and come back after the rendering engine’s had a minute or 5 to think about it.

Overall, WiGLE aims to show people about wireless in a more-technical capacity then your average static map or newspaper article.

If your network is in WiGLE and you don’t like it, we’ll take it out immediately, but you should look into making your network harder to detect AND more secure; remember that you’re the one bombarding passers-by with your signal. We aren’t affiliated directly with any particular community or interest (other than our own), but we applaud the efforts of the people who wrote the stumbling software that feeds our project, the people looking to use wireless in innovative ways, and especially the community of people who just dig wireless network access and dig sharing it. (freenets)

What’s the license for all this?

The official legal End User License Agreement. We basically just offer no warranties on our software, and don’t want our software to be used for unlicensed commercial gain.

Commercial Use

To help fund WiGLE operations, we offer licenses to a subset of the data derived from postings that our users have permited us to use for commercial purposes. As a matter of policy, we will not comment on future, past, or hypothetical customers.

We additionally refuse to claim or disclaim any involvement with the alleged moon landings, area 51 and ‘bigfoot’.

Why Don’t You Offer Non US Maps?

We’d love to offer world-wide, street-level mapping information, but there’s nothing free for our use. WiGLE relies on the TIGER and VMAP0 mapping data sets for our current maps, which allows us to produce our maps without intellectual property entanglement or licensing fees. We’re certainly interested in hearing from you about candidate datasets which we can use under similar terms, but we’re not necessarily going to write a new parser for each country/city/neighborhood in the world. See The forums for an up-to-date status on our search and instructions for composing your own raster mappacks!

How Can I Change My Password?

The main site and forums use linked but seperate authentication systems. One of the problems this can cause is that if you use (or have used) forum tools to update your password, it may no longer match your main password for the site. We recommend you use the change password page to update both passwords simultaneously and avoid complication. If you’ve forgotten your password, we recommend you contact us via WiGLE-admin[at]WiGLE.net and include your registration information for proof of identity.

Very cool.

Stay tuned.

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November, 2010

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

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“This is something every school council across Canada should be questioning”, the QMI Agency has Andrew Couper, a member of the elected school council, warning.

Parents in 14 schools in the Barrie, Bradford, Collingwood, Orillia and Wasaga Beach areas were worried about symptoms including memory loss, trouble concentrating, skin rashes, hyperactivity, night sweats and insomnia, exhibited by their kids.

“The parents complain they can’t get the Simcoe County school board or anyone else to take their concerns seriously, even though the children’s symptoms all disappear on weekends when they aren’t in school”, the CBC had Rodney Palmer of the Simcoe County Safe School Committee, saying, going on:

“These kids are getting sick at school but not at home. I’m not saying it’s because of the Wi-Fi because we don’t know yet, but I’ve pretty much eliminated every other possible source.”

The parents said they’d pay pay for wired connections if the board switched off the WiFi, Palmer said, but, “They didn’t even say no,” he said in the story. “They ignored it and … reaffirmed their position supporting Wi-Fi.”

A “controversial proposal from a group of Ontario teachers to ban wireless Internet from schools over concerns it’s harming children’s health fizzled out”, said the Canadian Press, going on a resolutiog to get wireless technology out of classrooms put forward by teachers in the Niagara region “was soundly defeated at the annual general meeting of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario”.

Health Canada says “scientific evidence shows that exposure to low-level radiofrequency energy, such as that from Wi-Fi systems, is not dangerous to the public”, according to the story.

But parents at St Vincent Euphrasia voted to ban WiFi transmitters “after some students reported feeling ill after they were installed”, says the QMI Agency.

“After learning the whole story about how risky WiFi is, parents voted to protect their children’s health and plug the computers back in with hardwires,” it has Couper stating.

Stay tuned.

(Cheers, Marc)

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QMI Agency – Ontario school bans Wi-Fi, October 18, 2010
worried about symptoms – New WiFi health fears, August 16, 2010
CBC – Ont. parents suspect Wi-Fi making kids sick, August 15, 2010
Canadian Press – Ontario teachers vote down proposal aimed at banning Wi-Fi from classrooms, August 17, 2010
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

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Here’s war-flying.

“Some guys have put together a radio contol airplane that can detect Wifi networks”, says CrashingDutchman on DIY Drones, stating >>>

I am posting this here since in there ‘How do I put this together’-section, they mention diydrones because they use an ArduPilot: http://rabbit-hole.org/howto.html

Source (Dutch): http://www.geenstijl.nl/mt/archieven…iegtuigje.html

Translate with Google: http://translate.googleusercontent.c…3yaqQ7Sj-MXRaA

Specifications: http://rabbit-hole.org/

Defcon interview: http://revision3.com/hak5/defcon18

“The electrically powered airframe  based on a large scale Mig 23 Flogger hobby model kit”, says sUSAS News, going on, “Loss of freedoms for traditional aeromodellers is already on the cards as authorities around the world realise what the largely ignored group is now capable of.”

You “don’t have to join too many dots for potential misuse. Actions of groups that claim to be defending freedoms or rights might lead to less for more”, it says.

In the UK, the CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) has “already put measures in place to regulate airborne data gathering”, the story adds.

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sUSAS News – Wi-Fi Aerial Surveillance Platform, WASP drone, August 15, 2010

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A school district in Ontario.

Regular p2pnet readers will remember Lakehead University. In 2006, its president, Fred Gilbert, was worried about the health impact of radio waves  emitted by WiFi networks.

Now parents in 14 schools in the Barrie, Bradford, Collingwood, Orillia and Wasaga Beach areas say their kids have symptoms  including memory loss, trouble concentrating, skin rashes, hyperactivity, night sweats and insomnia, says the CBC.

“The parents complain they can’t get the Simcoe County school board or anyone else to take their concerns seriously, even though the children’s symptoms all disappear on weekends when they aren’t in school”, it has Rodney Palmer of the Simcoe County Safe School Committee, saying, going on:

“These kids are getting sick at school but not at home. I’m not saying it’s because of the Wi-Fi because we don’t know yet, but I’ve pretty much eliminated every other possible source.”

The parents’ group says it’ll pay pay for wired connections if the board switches off the WiFi, Palmer said, but, “They didn’t even say no,” he says in the story. “They ignored it and … reaffirmed their position supporting Wi-Fi.

“They are culpable and … they have the gall to go on the record and say they haven’t had any doctor’s notes. Well what doctor has been schooled about the rate of microwave infections?”

Susan Clarke, a former research consultant to the Harvard School of Public Health, said WiFi technology alters fundamental physiological functioning and can cause neurological and cardiac symptoms, says the CBC.

And professor Magda Havas of Trent University in Peterborough, who studies the health effects of electromagnetic radiation, “issued an open letter to parents and boards saying she is ‘increasingly concerned’ about Wi-Fi and cellphone use at schools”, it states, adding:

“Palmer plans to find alternate schools or even home school his two children this fall if the board doesn’t agree to turn off the Wi-Fi and said other parents will likely follow suit if the symptoms return.”

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health impact – Lakehead University Gmail controversy, January 15, 2009
CBC – Ont. parents suspect Wi-Fi making kids sick, August 15, 2010

August, 2010

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And they’ll soon be deployed in the EU.

But researchers at the University of Southern California and at Rutgers University say the WiFi systems present serious security and privacy problems.

The team studied Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems using both laboratory experiments with isolated tire pressure sensor modules and experiments with a complete vehicle system aind in their abstract to Security and Privacy Vulnerabilities of In-Car Wireless Networks: A Tire Pressure Monitoring System Case Study, they say “eavesdropping is easily possible at a distance of roughly 40m from a passing vehicle”.

Not only that, but, “reverse-engineering of the underlying protocols revealed static 32 bit identifiers and that messages can be easily triggered remotely, which raises privacy concerns as vehicles can be tracked through these identifiers, they say, going on >>>

Further, current protocols do not employ authentication and vehicle implementations do not perform basic input validation, thereby allowing for remote spoofing of sensor messages.

We validated this experimentally by triggering tire pressure warning messages in a moving vehicle from a customized software radio attack platform located in a nearby vehicle.

The paper includes recommendations for improving the privacy and security of tire pressure monitoring systems and other coming in-car WiFi sensor networks.

(Cheers, Ivan)

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August, 2010

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“It is about a project in two Italian towns to construct a citizen-owned WiFi mesh network that will allow direct communication of all participants and will link into the internet at provider level.

Providing a translation, Sepp says he believes the project “might profitably be replicated in many places across the planet”, going on >>>

This particular proposal envisions the use of WiFi on rooftops. It would also be possible to use optical data transfer technology for such a network, as I recently discussed on this blog in an article titled

Application Content Infrastructure bypasses Internet Backbone, opens way for P2P ‘last mile’ net

Project SPIDERWEB – a citizen-owned WiFi (mesh) network

This is a group of persons who intend to construct a citizen-owned WiFi mesh network to bring free and low-cost communication in the area of Cerveteri-Ladispoli (two towns just north of Rome).

The Mission:

We are used to seeing our relation with a telephone or internet provider as if the way things are arranged was the only possible model. Today, this is a relation of “one (the provider) with many (us)”. In practice, this is the same model that is used for all vital services, energy, gas and so on. In this case we often have a monopolistic provider who repetitively charges a number of costs, putting them on the shoulders of that “one” who has to pay the high price of the service.

The relation therefore becomes either centralized where one point provides a service to large parts of the population or in the best of cases it is decentralized where several points provide service to a more limited number, as in the case of telecommunication. In both of these models of distribution however it is always one who distributes to single users and who charges a fee or metered tariff for its services.

On the other hand, it would be much more interesting if everyone became both a user and provider of the service having a direct connection with the whole distributed network. In that case, everyone becomes a node in the network, receiving and transmitting the signal. All of these nodes together form a reliable network of distributed ownership.

In this model, the ‘last mile’ would not be run by Telecom (Italian national phone company), and the various providers who lease their lines with costs that are inevitably paid by the final user. The distributed mesh network would be a real ‘last mile provider’ owned by the citizens, which would of course make it possible to provide a number of FREE services on that network because it is owned by those who use it.

Those are a lot of interconnected, communicating nodes that can exchange data and information at high throughput rates in wireless mode. Today instead, even to communicate with our neighbor, if we use the internet, we have to go through our provider and then back down through his, to reach his computer. It is the same with the telephone. We have to get connected to the nearest telephone switchboard to then go down again through the wires to our neighbor’s phone.

With this distributed mesh system instead, I have a direct line to anyone who is part of the network, and I don’t have to go through any intermediaries. Only one access to the internet will be needed and it will be freely distributed, carried by the active nodes of the distributed network.

Increasing available bandwidth

One good point is that in this case, the sharing of bandwidth will not penalize the users because everyone of them receives and amplifies the signal. The local net even increases the available bandwidth, since every user can talk directly with any other user in the network. In practice, I will have a high velocity network where the cost of data traveling inside the network is extremely low if not zero, paying only when access to the internet is needed.

The network will have guaranteed wide band connectivity because if the network buys from a provider access at 10 megabit, those will be 10 real megabit, both in download and in upload, rather than a “best scenario” figure which often the case today. This direct control of bandwidth makes it possible to use services that are difficult to implement today because of a lack of bandwidth, such as streaming, VOIP etc. In the average our connections, even though nominally they reach 8 megabit, are some 2.5 or 3 in download and a mere 0.4 in upload.

The distributed network will attain notable contractual power. It is no longer the single user who contracts for bandwidth and has to accept the conditions of a small choice of providers. The network as a whole contracting for bandwidth can obtain much more favorable conditions than we could, each one of us alone.

Another important point is that a network of this kind will be less vulnerable to blackouts and to catastrophic events such as earthquakes, because nodes automatically connect to the closest active node in their vicinity and the network automatically reconfigures to keep on working. In case access to the internet were interrupted, it would still be possible to communicate through the local net. The cost of running the network would be much lower and the net would be more resistant.

Community services

The local network can become a provider of service to companies that need broad band access to deliver their products to end users, things like streaming of movies that no longer have to be rented on DVD, publicity of local products over dedicated community TV channels and so on. There are also public utility services that could use the network, from e-learning for kids who have to stay home, connecting them directly to the school, to the provision of emergency help to older people, from TV and radio for neighborhoods and towns to administrative services such as obtaining documents, making appointments with local administration etc. The network cost for those services that do not need access to the internet, would be negligible.

Any user with a smart phone could hook up to the network at any point, same for any PC or notebook with a network card. Phone calls can be made through VOIP, obtaining large savings and, thanks to the large available bandwidth, good quality of connection. In the future, when the distributed access system is widely adopted, the different last mile providers may link up and perhaps with one account we can obtain access anywhere, even when away on holidays. Compared to today’s access costs, savings should be around 40%, perhaps more, while quality and variety of services to choose from would be much better.

A low cost solution

Using WiFi technology, this infrastructure can be constructed at a very reasonable cost and after urban networks have been completed, one could think about connecting outlying areas that do not have good access today. Think about it – the network could be financed using only the current costs of connection for one year and the connectivity costs of the local administration.

While it would be optimal to construct this network in conjunction with the local administration, in case this cannot be arranged, there is always the possibility to link up directly from the bottom up, with people putting a WiFi antenna on their rooftop and starting to share the network. Such a network can grow in a natural way, automatically adjusting to changes in size. Once the threshold of a hundred nodes is reached, and even better with a higher number, bandwidth can be acquired from a provider and thus the network has its own dedicated access to the internet.

From an ecological and emissions point of view, mesh networks that adopt wireless technology work with an rooftop antenna that can serve several people and emits 20 to 30 milliwatt, consuming only 6 Watt of electricity. In comparison, the cell phones which we keep in our pockets have emission strengths in the range of 500 to 1500 milliwatt.

The hardware costs for each node range from a low of 70 to a high of 200 euro for the technologically more advanced devices. The visual impact is limited and certainly lower than that of a traditional or a parabolic TV antenna. Installation is not subject to permits, it is enough to inform your building administration. Technical needs include an electricity outlet, possibly with its own counter to determine consumption, and a data cable going down to your apartment, which could utilize the same space as the standard TV cable.

Similar networks are already functioning in various places:

Catalonia, Spain (Guifi.net)

Ljubljana, Slovenia (wlan-lj.net) (wikipedia)

Athens, Greece (Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network)

Rome, Italy (Ninux.org)

Not all community wireless networks are citizen owned. The majority of them seem to be organized at the level of local administration. As this incomplete list on wikipedia shows, there are a large number of these networks already, but there could be many, many more …

Stay tuned.

(Cheers, Crosbie and Michel)

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P2P Foundation – The Spiderweb Project – a citizen-owned WiFi mesh network, July 6, 2010

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She launched the suit after Rogers Wireless merged her account with her husband’s.

When he saw the new invoice, he also saw “several hour-long phone calls to a single phone number”, said the Toronto Star.

He called the number and he discovered his wife had been having an affair, it said.

Now, in a Q&A, the National Post notes Nagy filed her statement of claim in December, 2008, asking, “Why are you going public now?

“I wanted to go public from day one”, she says, going on >>>

My feeling was that people need to know, but I didn’t because of my lawyer. I’m willing to be the example for people to know what Rogers can do with personal information.

National Post : Did you not breach a marital contract with your spouse before Rogers breached their contract with you?

Nagy: I don’t know how to answer that because the bottom line is they were negligent in protecting people’s private information. It’s unacceptable for them to take it upon themselves [to disclose my personal information]. There is no such excuse as an error because you have to sign a document and you expect them to be protective of personal information. My personal information is my life.

National Post : But can you see the similarity between your infidelity and Rogers’ breach of contract?

Nagy: No, because my privacy is my privacy and I should’ve been given the opportunity to deal with it in my own way. It was not their responsibility to impact my life in such a way that affected everything.

National Post : Why are you suing for $600,000?

Nagy: It’s the loss of my job, the loss of my life that came along with the breach of contract and privacy, and their negligence. It had nothing to do with emotional damages.

Stay tuned?

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for $600,000 – Rogers Wireless wrecks woman’s marriage, March 17, 2010
Toronto Star – Toronto woman sues Rogers after her affair is exposed, March 17, 2010
National Post – Q & A: The woman suing Rogers after her cell bill exposed her infidelity, March 18, 2010

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“Looks like I’m not the only one that got screwed by their computers mixing up accounts of the same household …”

That’s Crazy Canuk on dslreports.

The woman is suing Rogers for $600,000 “for alleged invasion of privacy and breach of contract, the results of which she says have ruined her life” states the Toronto Star, going on >>>

In 2007, Gabriella Nagy had a cellphone account with Rogers which sent the monthly bill to her home address in her maiden name. Her husband was the account holder for the family’s cable TV service at the same address. Around June 4, 2007, he called Rogers to add internet and home phone.

The following month, Rogers mailed a “global” invoice for all of its services to the matrimonial home that included an itemized bill for Nagy’s cellular service, according to the statement of claim filed in Ontario Superior Court of Justice.

When Nagy’s husband opened the Rogers invoice, he saw several hour-long phone calls to a single phone number.

“Nobody does business this way and he’s not stupid,” says Nagy, who is in her 30s. He called the number, spoke to the ‘third party’ who confirmed the affair, which had lasted only a few weeks, Nagy told the Star.

“My husband didn’t tell me that’s how he found out, he just left”, she’s quoted as saying.

Stay tuned.

(Cheers, Marc and RW)

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dslreports – Rogers privacy violation contributes to divorce, March 17, 2010
Toronto Star – Toronto woman sues Rogers after her affair is exposed, March 17, 2010

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But, “Our understanding was that this was the Cadillac version of wireless Internet and all of a sudden my Cadillac turned into a Chevette,” Prince Edward Island’s Charlottetown Guardian has Sheila Eastman stating angrily.

Under discussion is the Novatel Wireless U760 USB Modem. But “Bell has shut down those much talked about turbo sticks because of a possible battery meltdown”, says the story, going on:

“Customers who have the Novatel Wireless MiFi 2372 have already been notified. The devices were shut down as of May 3. Replacement devices are being mailed out to customers.

Meanwhile, “I mean I would really rather not have a battery blow up in my face”, says Eastman in the story. “I don’t know what happens when a lithium battery blows up but I really don’t care to find out.”

Bell says customers will soon get a pre-addressed, pre-paid envelope “in which to return the device”, says the post, continuing, “Customers should receive it back, with a new battery cover, within six to eight weeks. In the meantime, customers will be given a second pre-activated turbo stick to use while their device is being fixed.

“Customers with a Virgin Mobility turbo stick may also be affected”, says the Guardian, suggesting “They too should check to see if they are using the Novatel Wireless MiFi 2372.”

In January, “Bell Aliant apologized for its poor communication plan with regard to its rollout of high-speed Internet to rural P.E.I. Bell admitted it could have done a better job during the roll out”, says the story, adding >>>

Eastman said if Bell truly cared about its customers it would have sent the replacement turbo stick before it shut down her high-speed Internet service. She said she only had the turbo stick for the past two months.

Now, she’ll have to go back to the Community Access Site for access the Internet.

“I’m disappointed,” she said.

“But am I surprised by anything Bell Aliant would do anymore? No.”

For more information, call Bell at 1-800-611-6600.

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Charlottetown Guardian – Bell shuts down wireless turbo sticks, May 5, 2010

“According to a Jan. 9 blog post from SourceSec Security Research, some D-Link routers have an insecure implementation of the Home Network Administration Protocol (HNAP), which could allow an unauthorized person to change a router’s settings,” says Computerworld, going on >>>

SourceSec published a proof-of-concept software tool called HNAP0wn that would enable the hack — a move that D-Link criticized.

“By publicizing their tool and giving specific instructions, the authors of the report have publicly outlined how the security can be breached, which could have had serious repercussions for our customers,” D-Link said in a statement.

D-Link said it only appeared possible to hack the routers using the software tool and not just with stand-alone code.

D-Link and SourceSec “differed over which models were vulnerable, says the story.

According to SourceSec Security Research, “The short story is that D-Link routers have a second administrative interface, which uses the Home Network Administration Protocol.

“While HNAP does require basic authentication, the mere existence of HNAP on D-Link routers allows attackers and malware to bypass CAPTCHA ’security’. Further, HNAP authentication is not properly implemented, allowing anyone to view and edit administrative settings on the router.

Not only but also, “HNAP appears to have been implemented in D-Link routers since 2006, and cannot be disabled,” says the post, adding:

“We have verified that vulnerabilities exist in the HNAP implementations of the DI-524, DIR-628 and DIR-655 routers, and suspect that most, if not all, D-Link routers since 2006 are vulnerable.

Read the full write-up here, and download SourceSec Security POC tool, HNAP0wn, here.

D-Link states new firmware updates are being made available across its Web sites, says Computerworld.

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p2pnet music downloads – and stuff

Computerworld – D-Link issues fixes for router vulnerabilities, January 15, 2010
SourceSec Security Research – D-Link Routers: One Hack to Own Them All, January 9, 2010

Anthony Floyd’s home use with Shaw Internet averages 17 GB per month, with a low over the past 11 months of 6.1 GB and a high of 55 GB.

Jon Jennings, who auto-loads 5 GB of podcasts on iTunes every month, says downloading a five-minute video amounted to 25 MB.

Greg Andrews and his two roommates have to watch they don’t blow their monthly Novus cap of 200 GB up/200 GB down.

Hussey, Floyd, Jennings and Andrews are all cited in Gillian Shaw’s Vancouver Sun story which kicks off with a tale of woe from Dr John Sehmer who, “came home from a three-week holiday in New Zealand to find he owed $1,400 on his iPhone bill”.

Nor, it says, was the charge for phone calls, “except perhaps the one when Rogers called to see if he was happy with the service”.

The huge bill mounted up from data roaming charges on his iPhone. Nothing else.

“Wary of roaming charges when he travelled, Sehmer took an unlocked phone to New Zealand and used a local network SIM card there for voice calls,” says Gillian, noting, “What he failed to realize was that e-mail landing in his iPhone`s in-box was costing hundreds of dollars.”

She quotes Sehmer as saying he tried to use the Rogers’ site to find out what the rates were before he left but, couldn’t.

“There was something about so much per kilobyte downloaded, but one really has no idea what kilobytes are used to check an e-mail,” Sehmer says in the Vancouver Sun post, which adds:

“Sehmer disputed the bill with Rogers, but it was only after the company cut off his service that it relented and agreed to waive all the extra charges from the trip.”

And ironically, “they cut me off during the swine flu pandemic, and I’m a doctor,” said Sehmer.

“They told me I`d have to give a credit card number to get it hooked up again and pay a re-hookup fee.”

(Thanks, Marc)

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Vancouver Sun – Wireless charges: Groaning over roaming, June 5, 2009

Surf the Net? Or eat?

No brainer, eh?

Because WiFi is crucial, says Hot Hardware.

In a survey by American Airlines and HP, some 47% of business travelers reckoned WiFi was the, “most important airport amenity,” outscoring basic travels needs such as food by nearly 30 percentage points,” says the story.

Results came from 1,500 frequent travelers who log more than 20 trips a year on three or more airlines, it states, adding it also found the largest complaint, “wasn’t delayed flights, cramped areas, endless fees or the lack of an AC outlet in coach”.

It was dead PC batteries.

Now you know.

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Hot Hardware – Airport Wi-Fi More Important Than Food, May 23, 2009

The intercoms sold to let parents listen in to every snuffle, sob and cry operate in the same frequency band as the wireless networks more and more of us are installing and can generate so much interference that they make them unusable.

The television rebroadcasters that many people use to watch satellite TV in the bedroom without having to install a second set-top box also use the same frequency, because it is one of the few areas of the radio spectrum that does not require a license, and they too can slow down wifi speeds or make it hard for a computer to make a connection to a local network.

These unwelcome findings about interference come from a detailed survey by Mass Consultants carried out on behalf of the telecoms regulator Ofcom as part of their investigation into how radio spectrum is currently used and should be allocated in future.

They found that in central London the number of overlapping networks attempting to use the same channel was a significant problem, and that in some areas nine-tenths of the available bandwidth was being used by wifi nodes advertising themselves or doing general `housekeeping’, with only one-tenth actually available for user data.

Outside major metropolitan areas the real problem was interference from other devices using the same frequency ranges.

As I write this in a café near Holborn I can see eighteen networks apart from the one I’m connected to, so I can vouch for the scale of the problem in London!

Wifi is far from robust in normal circumstances, as anyone who has wandered around a house with a laptop looking for a space that gets a decent signal will testify.

And back in 2006 consultants AirMagnet got some useful pre-Christmas publicity when they announced that reflections from tree baubles and tinsel could cut wireless signal strength by a quarter in well-decorated households.

But these findings reveal both the growing popularity and importance of wireless networks for home and business net use, and the urgent need to do something about it. Imagine how nice it would be if most wireless networks were suddenly five or even ten times faster and generally reliable.

There is, of course, a simple if somewhat radical solution to the problem of having to squeeze wifi, baby alarms and TV retransmitters into the same frequency range as remote controls, children’s toys and many other devices. We could get rid of them or at least the ones that cause trouble.

The problems largely arise because the devices are analogue and use a wider band of frequencies than digital versions of the same technology and their signals are much more variable than the relatively constrained digital signals expected by a wifi receiver, so if we made them all digital we could design them so as not to interfere.

Of course this won’t happen, because owners won’t accept that the analogue devices they’ve already paid for and used for years have to be sacrificed in the name of the bright shiny digital future.

I can see their point, even if part of me just wants to sweep their old technologies away in favour of an uncluttered wireless world.

Another solution would be to move wifi away from the currently unregulated 2.4 gigahertz frequency band it uses, but here we face much bigger issues than the objections of parents and sports fans.

Vast tranches of the radio spectrum from 9 kHz to 275 GHz is taken up by radio and television, both the older analogue transmissions that are currently being switched off and the newer digital services that replace them, DAB and digital terrestrial television.

If we got rid of the analogue and the digital services and replaced the whole thing with a high-bandwidth wireless network service then we would have more than enough room for laptops and baby listeners.

Yet even if Ofcom decided this was a good idea and they won’t there is an international dimension to the issue as the International Telecommunication Union’s Radiocommunication Sector has the task of ensuring that the many systems in use do not interfere with each other.

Much of the ITU’s work is about balancing competing desires, but there are also real physical limits on what can be done. Some frequencies, for example, are used by remote sensing devices in satellites because they are characteristic of water or growing plants, and obviously these can’t be changed by administrative fiat.

But as with so many established practices and procedures, from copyright law to the regulation of the financial markets, digital technologies both create new opportunities and challenge or undermine current practice. The ability to make perfect digital copies has lead to the crisis in the music and film industries, and the availability of digital communications channels is causing us to question the wasteful use of spectrum by analogue devices.

Unfortunately it seems unlikely that we’ll see a wholesale rethink of the way spectrum is allocated, and the lack of political will means there is little chance that those pushing for deregulation of broad swathes of the spectrum will have any success. We will have to live with flakey wifi for a while yet.

Bill Thompson – andfinally.com
[Thompson is a UK-based writer and broadcaster. He has a weekly column on the BBC WebWise site, and contributes both on and off-line to The Guardian, The Register and The New Statesman, among others. His "inappropriately-titled 'billblog' "appears weekly on BBC News Online in the technology news section.]

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May, 2009

The trouble is, one of its products, Netopia, is apparently providing WiFi almost without boundaries to hackers in Ireland.

Eircom, Ireland’s largest ISP, has just agreed to disconnect its own users accused by Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG of being file-sharers.

Now Eircom customers are at risk of having their Net connections chopped because of a security hole in some of the Netopia WiFi routers it uses.

The flaw makes it child’s play for war-driving hackers to hijack older Netopia 2247 and 3300 WiFi routers and, hence, some Eircom accounts.

‘Huge security risk’

Motorola bought Netopia in 2006 and, “I always had concerns about Eircom’s default set up for their wireless broadband routers ever since one of my clients asked me to set one up for them,”" says an October 2007 post on Tom Doyle :: TALK, going on:

“When you get a wireless router from Eircom, you are also given a disc which has a program on it to help you generate your WEP key. With the program loaded on your computer, you simply enter the serial key on the side of the router and bang, you have the WEP key – to write down and take away.

“In my mind, this is a huge security risk.”

Said Bart Busschots a month earlier, “I had heard complaints from people in the past that Eircom didn’t seem to do the whole security thing properly at all,” going on:

“I guess I just hopped they’d have sorted themselves out by now. They haven’t. I’m not sure if it’s down to incompetence or just not caring about their customers, but, in my book there are no valid excuses for leaving your customers exposed.”

Given its current arrangement with the Big 4 labels, customer care doesn’ t appear to be high on its list of priorities and Busschots continued »»»

Currently each Netopia router shipped by Eircom has two pre-programmed settings that distinguish it from every other Eircom Netopia router out there. These are the SSID (the ‘name’ for the wireless network) and the WEP key. Both are somehow pre-generated and added to the router’s configuration before shipping. If the information I have been sent is correct there is a fatal flaw in the way these two settings are generated.

They are both apparently derived in a simple way from the router’s serial number and given JUST the SSID (which is BROADCAST by the router) you can apparently easily calculate the default WEP password. This means that if you follow Eircom’s instructions and leave it at that the name your wireless network is broadcasting contains all the information an informed attacker needs to access your supposedly private and protected network.

Update (02 Oct 2007): As has been pointed out in this thread on boards.ie the serial number which is used to generate the WEP key can be derived from the MAC address of the router so changing the SSID is not a protection. As long as WiFi is enabled the MAC address can be sniffed and hence the default WEP key generated.

Fast forward to 2009 and, Sean Byrne, who lives in Ireland told TorrentFreak, “There are lots and lots of existing WiFi signals that are open to this exploit. I`m located in Galway city, there are several `Eircom*** ***` SSID`d networks located in the city that are open to this.”

Even now, “It`s like free communal WiFi on tap,” the story has Byrne saying, “most places you travel in Ireland will have an Eircom WiFi signal.”

Adds TorrentFreak:

“Although WEP security should be avoided if at all possible, some devices (particularly older ones) rely on it. Short of changing the WEP keys, this particular exploit can be defeated by simply changing the network`s SSID.

“That said, we expect the same people who ignored or missed Eircom`s advisory the first time round will more than likely take the same action as they did back then – i.e very little. In the meantime, thanks to Eircom’s deal with the music industry, anyone in this position can have their connection used by an unauthorized file-sharer, and along with that the prospect of being accused of something they haven`t done.

“Equally, anyone with one of these routers could simply claim they have been the victim of a hacker and Eircom would have to believe them. I`m sure we`ll be hearing more about this situation before long.”

Stay tuned

disconnect its own users  – Eircom caves in to Big 4 labels, January 29, 2009
Tom Doyle :: TALK – Eircom netopia wireless router hack, October 1, 2007
Bart Busschots – Eircom Exposes Its Broadband Customers to Serious Security Risks, September 11, 2007
TorrentFreak – Eircom Customers Wide Open to Erroneous Disconnection, February 2, 2009

It has friends in low places.

If its consumers [read customers, whom it treats like dirt] were of any account, it would’ve been long gone. But it’s still there, and claiming to have the fastest WiFi network in not only in Canada, but in North America.

It’s like the old lawyers joke: Q: How do you tell if they’re lying? A: Their lips are moving.

Because Bell’s PR has turned out to be BS.

“In response to a complaint filed by Rogers Wireless, Advertising Standards Canada, the advertising industry’s national self-regulatory body, recently looked into a Bell Mobility ad that claimed Bell had ‘the fastest … network across North America’,” says the Toronto Star, going on »»»

The panel ultimately decided that Bell’s claim was inaccurate after viewing evidence put forward by Rogers.

The panel then asked members of the public to give their assessment of the claim in question.

Bell refused to supply any evidence to the panel.

Janet Feasby, spokesperson for the ASC, said that “considering the evidence provided, the claim was found to be inaccurate.”

The ASC informed Bell of its findings in October, but Bell refused to recognize the decision, says the story.

(Thanks, Marc)

Toronto Star – Bell sticks to claim of fastest network, January 16, 2009

p2pnet news view WiFi | Freedom | P2P:- In a bid to win approval for his plan to, “auction off a slice of the airwaves” for a free US WiFi broadband network, soon-to-be-ex-Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin has removed an especially contentious element.

And that, says Newsday, “is a requirement that the provider of the wireless network filter Internet content to block any material deemed inappropriate for children”.

The news is especially interesting in light of attempts by governments in Australia and Britain to impose online censorship, claiming it’s vital to protect children from undesirable content they might otherwise come across online.

Martin’s proposal to, “build a family-friendly broadband network by blocking objectionable Web sites was loosely based on the business model of a startup called M2Z Networks,” says Newsweek, noting he dropped the requirement, “to increase the chances that his proposal will win the support of his fellow commissioners”.

It adds:

“The concept mirrors the logic behind indecency regulations governing over-the-air broadcast TV: Since the service would be available to everyone, it would need to protect children from unsuitable material.

“But the filtering proposal raised concerns among free-speech advocates on the left and right, who question how to determine what constitutes appropriate Internet content and how effective content filters truly are. Opponents point out that filters often mistakenly block legitimate sites, including resources about health and sex education.”

Newsday – FCC chairman drops content-filtering rule from proposal for free wireless broadband network, December 31, 2008
Australia – Australian censor plan targets BitTorrent, December 23, 2008
Britain – Dear Andy Burnham: On X-rated Net sites , December 30, 2008

Canada’s Atif Shamim says he’s come up with a way to extend battery life by up to 12 times.

But the Battery Bunny doesn’t have to worry.

Yet.

Shamim, an electronics PhD student at Carleton University, says his invention is meant for use with power-hungry devices such as the Apple iPhone.

It involves a packaging technique, “to connect the antenna with the circuits via a wireless connection between a micro-antenna embedded within the circuits on the chip,” says the university.

“This has not been tried before —- that the circuits are connected to the antenna wirelessly,” says Shamim. “They’ve been connected through wires and a bunch of other components. That’s where the power gets lost.”

In June, 2007, “”Apple tried to answer critics who had given the iPhone low marks for its short battery life,” says a statement.

“Five months after unveiling the new product, the company announced the iPhone could now get up to eight hours of talk time, up from the five hours of talk time and 16 hours of audio playback at the launch.

“If an iPhone battery needs repairing, Apple will service it for $89, plus $10.77 for shipping for Canadian customers. All data on the iPhone is lost during the service, which normally takes three business days.”

The story’s headline claims the breakthrough can extend battery life by up to 12 times, “but that seems to be a misinterpretation of Shamim’s claim that his method reduces the power required to operate the antenna by a factor of about 12; 3.3 mW down from 38 mW,” says Soulskill on Slashdot.

Says Shamim’s paper, Wireless Interconnect Between On-Chip and LTCC Antennas for System-in-Package Applications:

“A novel LTCC based TX SiP implementation has been demonstrated which makes use of on-chip antenna to LTCC [Low Temperature Co-fired Ceramic] package antenna coupling through an aperture in the common ground plane. The strategy is useful as it eliminates the need of isolating buffers, bond pads, bond wires, matching elements, baluns and transmission lines. It not only reduces the number of components and simplifies SiP design but also consumes lower power. The chip coupling to LTCC patch antenna improves the TX module gain by 32 dB and range by 23 m as compared to the on-chip antenna alone, without affecting the RF circuit performance and power consumption. The conventional LTCC package provides 3 times more range than the proposed design but consumes 12 times more power.”

Carleton University – Carleton engineering student creates innovative invention to prolong battery life, November 27, 2008
Slashdot - Student Invention May Significantly Extend Mobile Device Battery Life, December 19, 2008

But maybe not.

“Open wireless networks have served as a successful defense strategy for several alleged filesharers, as it is often impossible for content owners to prove that the person they accuse, has actually distributed the files they claim they did. Unfortunately, for the customers of the UK ISP Karoo, running open WiFi might also get them disconnected – even if it’s unintentional.”

That’s the intro to Ernesto’s TorrentFreak story which goes on some people leave their networks open, “simply because they are clueless about how to secure it” while others just don’t mind if their WiFi connections are open and, “In recent months, we have seen several cases where accused filesharers have successfully argued that someone else may have used their WiFi to share copyrighted materia,” it says, going on »»»

“Because anyone could have accessed the network, it is impossible to prove that the defendant was the one who shared files illegally.”

But, “Not all ISPs are happy with customers who have open WiFi,” says the story, pointing out some even threaten to disconnect those who do, one such being Britain’s Karoo which had the item below in its September 2008 terms and conditions

We shall be entitled to terminate the Service immediately if We discover that you have permitted (whether knowingly or not) a third party (or third parties) to access the Service using a wireless connection over Your Communications Line.

TorrentFreak’s Ernesto continues

Should an ISP be entitled to demand this? Karoo leaves its customers no choice, and simply forbids them to leave their network unsecured, or use a FON router, despite the fact that this will be practically impossible for them to enforce. Not only that, people who have no idea about router security are now wide open to summary disconnection by this ISP. UK lawyers Davenport Lyons are actively encouraging that service providers of various types enforce their own terms and conditions against copyright infringers, so if you’re with Karoo and get a complaint, you can forget about 3 strikes. Even if you did nothing illegal, it’s one strike and you’re out.

Some would argue that having an open wireless network is the right thing to do. Earlier this year, security expert Bruce Schneier wrote an extensive essay on why it’s a good thing. Some of his key arguments were that it is basic kindness, and that the risk of running into abusers is extremely low. Also, when someone abuses the open WiFi to do something illegal, it is easy to defend yourself.

Schneier’s post led to a flood of responses, and most of them agreed with the security expert. Of course, there are pro’s and con’s to having an unsecured network, and whether it really is a wise choice can be debated. But, disconnecting your users simply because they, knowingly or not, have an open wireless network is a bit too strict for our taste. Nevertheless, Karoo thinks otherwise.

Karoo didn’t respond to Ernesto’s requests for comment, he adds.

However, on Saturday, p2pnet also asked Karoo what was going on and a few moments ago, received this by way of response »»»

Thank you for your enquiry regarding the recent changes to the Karoo Standard Terms.

We confirm that the changes were implemented to prevent unauthorised usage of the Karoo service by a small number of our customers.  The changes do not prevent our customers from connecting to the Karoo service from multiple computers, in their own household, or from remote wi-fi access points, legitimately.

We are sorry if we have caused you any concern.  We will make suitable amendments to the Karoo Standard Terms, to provide clarification on this point, in the next edition of the Karoo Standard Terms.

Oh. So that’s OK, then.

Stay tuned.

TorrentFreak – ISP Disconnects Customers with Open WiFi, November 2, 2008