Ethical question.

If your next door neighbor has wifi, and you discover this when your fiancee's new laptop suddenly acquires net access while on your dining room table, what's the ethical position to take? I'm thinking 'track down the source and knock on the appropriate door', myself, but I also want to liveblog the debates (which in this specific case is easy to do with the laptop and impossible otherwise).

So, actually, I guess what I really need is just a vaguely-plausible rationalization...

Comments

[hilzoy]

You rang??

Offhand, I'd say: knock on the door and tell your neighbor. Then ask if you can liveblog the debates on it, which the neighbor might be more inclined to let you do since you both did the decent thing and alerted him or her to a potentially serious security problem.

[Edward]

How is it a security problem? Could Moe intercept data from his neighbors computer?

It does seem an ethical problem, considering the neighbor is paying for the service, but if, like you said, the neighbor doesn't mind, then I saw, Screw the Man...er...too many protests lately...I mean, I can't see what harm it would do.

[carsick]

You're too busy to do any tracking down until the weekend aren't you?

Otherwise...what they said above.

[Bill]

From a security standpoint, I would tell him. Chances are if he has his wifi wide open he hasn't changed the default admin password on his router. Someone could get into his router and lock his own computer off from the internet, change the password on his router(locking him out of his router), hack your neighbors computer... all of these are possible. It's dangerous. People(hackers)cruise around in cars with laptops looking for just such situations. Chances are he would be happy to know and perhaps let you share his connection. He probably needs to set uyp his wireless security also. I don't know what kind of router he has but there are instructions online from most manufacturers.

Or maybe he has already secured it.

I'm amazed that people don't pay attention to wireless security, or rather, they aren't being warned strongly enough about it.

[Bill]

at the very least, he needs to change the default password on his router. I advise anyone to change the default password on your router, if you have one.

[Jesurgislac]

Tell your neighbour. It's the right thing to do.

Then ask him/her if it's okay to share their wireless network - and offer to kick in a few bucks to help pay for it.

[Gromit]

I'm with Hilzoy and Jesurgislac.

By the way, it might not be strictly legal to pay for use of the neighbor's wireless service. He'd have to check his service contract, but there is usually a clause prohibiting subleasing.

I have a similar, but slightly different ethical question: Several years back my wife and I moved into an apartment and immediately got a letter from the cable company threatening to shut off cable service and impose a reconnect fee if we failed to renew the previous owner's cable service right away. We didn't particularly want cable television and so we let it lapse, but we soon discovered that the cable provider never bothered to disconnect service. So we enjoyed free cable (including HBO) for a year.

My wife insists this was shady, and uses it to tease me since I tend to hold myself to what I believe are high ethical standards. I felt that since it was the cable provider's responsibility to disconnect the service, since they made clear that they knew that the service was still connected when we moved in and that they intended to cut it off absent any action on my part, and since cable television is not a limited resource in any conventional sense, we were in the clear. I don't think any of these reasons would stand on its own, but only in combination. Of course, it also spited me that they worded the letter as a threat.

So, am I wrong on this?

[hilzoy]

Gromit: I'm fine with your using the cable (as you say, it matters that it's not a limited resource.)

[praktike]

Tell him.

When I was a lowly college student my rabbit ears picked up a fuzzy version of the digital satellite whatever in the apartment next door. In that case, I had no choice but to steal.

[Slartibartfast]

I'm with the "tell him" crowd. Honesty goes a long way toward making for better neighbors. Plus, the other way you'd always have this thought in the back of your head when talking to him that he was the bonehead that let you steal his net access.

[Jesurgislac]

Gromit: it might not be strictly legal to pay for use of the neighbor's wireless service. He'd have to check his service contract, but there is usually a clause prohibiting subleasing.

It might not be strictly legal, but that would be the neighbor's ethical decision to make, not Moe's. If Moe is benefiting from a service which the neighbor is paying for, I think it's neighborly to offer to help pay for it - whether or not the neighbor takes him up on it.

[Duane]

Ditto above -- you should tell them. If in addition you offered to secure it for them it would be pretty much impossible for them to refuse you access for the debates...

[Josh]

I'll agree with everyone else and say that you should tell your neighbor, although you could always check a hotspot list to see if he's intentionally leaving his network open.

[Nate]

I'd say tell him, but there's also a fair number of people who deliberately leave their wifi access points open for other people to use. As long as everything's set up properly, it's not a security threat, nor is it really a limited resource, especially if your neighbor has broadband, most of that sits idle. Yes, some of the service contracts with providers try to ban you from networking other computers to the connection, but as somebody mentioned, that's the neighbor's choice, not yours.

[carsick]

moe
Dagnabbit, you ask for a little help finding a plausible rationalization and everybody gets all sincere on ya.

[Moe Lane]

"Dagnabbit, you ask for a little help finding a plausible rationalization and everybody gets all sincere on ya."

Yeah. (Martyred sigh) Fine, I'll be all ethical and stuff*. :)

Moe

*I was pretty much going to do that anyway, but I was looking forward to seeing some entertaining plausible rationalizations. Alas. Alack.

[sidereal]

Do you watch TV through his/her window?

[callmeishmael]

Is this an ethical lint trap designed to survey reader morals?

So....
Did your neighbor pay for the service?

Did your neighbor intend for you to have a service they paid for?

If he left the keys in his car, would you drive it? If he left his lawnmower in the side yard would you take it? If his house painters accidently came to your house would you put them to work on his dime?

I agree with others, let him know that something he paid for is at risk of being stolen and then ask if you can borrow a cup of sugar.....

[JC]

Eh.

Moe, legally, do you REALLY think you are going to get people to tell you otherwise? What is said here is recorded for posterity, into the new millenium! No one is going to admit anything...

For the record, though, I have DSL service, and I am sharing the bandwidth with others.

However, when I am schlepping my trusty laptop around SF, oftentimes I sit down in a coffeeshop, and can pick up some random "linksys" connection - which of course tells me that someone has accepted the default wireless settings - and - well, I'm not averse to sitting there happily connecting to the internet doing the important work of reading Obsidian Wings.

I just don't believe all you guys are that good - just sayin.

Here's my rationalization - give the money you save by not having a DSL connection, to you favorite charity. Problem solved.!

[Moe Lane]

"Is this an ethical lint trap designed to survey reader morals?"

Umm, no. It was a minor little quandary that I was having and which I found sufficiently interesting to share. If I was going to do ethical lint traps I'd come up with something with a bit more of a payoff; for that matter, I'd clearly define it as being merely a theoretical exercise. Sheesh.

[callmeishmael]

didn't mean it to be that heavy in my response...sorry. btw, i cut off the driver next to me on the way to work so ethical relativism can also be found in the lint trap.

[spiritrover]

*Of course*, if the world were perfect, you'd do the right thing and tell your neighbor that his wifi is wide open. But the world isn't perfect. People *all over the world* run wide open wifi, *every single day*. Telling your neighbor is just spit in the ocean, man, you *cannot* save everybody.

Besides, surely somebody else has already told him. He's running wide-open wifi, for pete's sake, and you don't live in a cul-de-sac in the woods. You've got plenty of neighbors who already know, and surely they aren't *all* dishonest. So he knows. It's open 'cause he wants it to be.

Plus, you might want to check at various times over the course of the next couple of days to make sure that it's really *wide* open. Maybe it's only open from time to time. Better check more often, maybe Thursday night. You'd hate to tell him it's "wide" open when it's really open just sometimes; you'd look like a chump. Can't have that!

[Moe Lane]

"didn't mean it to be that heavy in my response...sorry."

Likewise; I've got the low blood-sugar grumpies today (brown-bagging it this week), and that always makes me peevish.

[sidereal]

Moe, you're not working on proposing to anyone else are you?

;)

[praktike]

psst, Moe!

Nobody here will ever be the wiser if you actually decide to be a filthy dishonest lying scumbag and leech off your poor, unsuspecting neighbor's wifi.

I hope this helps.

[mac]

Just don't download any videos, or watch streaming media.

I leave mine open, with that policy.

Since it's a neighbor, offer to give him 5 bucks a month for the privilege.

[liberal japonicus]

Since your neighbor is beaming all those wifi waves into your house, you need to have your fiancee's laptop soak some of them up so both of you aren't irradiated. At least that is my understanding of the technology.

(this post is dedicated to a college friend's mother who, pleased to have one of the early microwaves, explained to me that they worked on the process of 'shooting the food full of microms that are all hot, which is why it gets hot so fast')

[Edward]

Since your neighbor is beaming all those wifi waves into your house, you need to have your fiancee's laptop soak some of them up so both of you aren't irradiated.

There you go Moe...you're only protecting yourself and your fiancee's health. I like the way liberal japonicus thinks!

[Neolith]

Well, I have occasion to travel quite a bit. I also desperately need internet access everywhere I go. My cell phone provides a steady 128kb connection. But most places I go, there is invariably an open wifi connection. I go ahead and use it. I don't rely on it, but I do use it.

So I think its a very ethically gray area. I think it would be outright wrong if you canceled your internet service and then just flat out mooched 100%. But using it for convenience? Then again, its your neighbor, so depending on how good a friend you want to be, you might want to tell him. Let's face it, this is the equivalent of someone turning his garden hose, and the water is saturating his lawn, then running into your backyard watering your grass on his dime. You aren't stealing from him.

If his admin password really is unchanged, then here is what you should do: Connect to it. Change his admin password, block all MAC addresses except his (which you should be able to get from monitoring the logs or active connections) and yours, then get out. Heh. He's still not very secure, but if you secure his router properly then most likely HE won't be able to logon.