Personal liability for my wireless home network

You bet! All P2P activities will point to your WAN IP address (assigned to the router), which both you and your ISP know is contracted and paid for by YOU! Only a moron would enable a personal wireless network without security enabled. Only a moron would operate an unencrypted wireless network AND pose your question.

Sorry, but 'moron' applies; nothing personal, just reality checking in.

I don't think the question has been litigated yet. Of course, if you become the first case, the fact that you asked here will make it harder to deny that you were aware of the potential risks. Even if you were ultimately excused from liability, the cost of defending yourself would be vastly greater than the small inconvenience of using encryption on your wireless network.

On Fri, 02 Feb 2007 18:41:30 -0700, Quaoar wrote: : G. Mack wrote: : > I have a wireless network and I don't enable encryption. Am I liable : > for other people who use my network w/o my permission? : > : > eg. Someone downloading copyrighted material or doing illegal : > activities? : : You bet! All P2P activities will point to your WAN IP address (assigned : to the router), which both you and your ISP know is contracted and paid : for by YOU! Only a moron would enable a personal wireless network : without security enabled. Only a moron would operate an unencrypted : wireless network AND pose your question. : : Sorry, but 'moron' applies; nothing personal, just reality checking in. : : Q

I suppose it would be churlish of me to ask you to support that diatribe with a summary of your legal credentials. But, what the hell, I'll do it anyway. BTW, I'll interpret silence as confirmation that you haven't any.

I'll agree that it isn't very smart not to protect your wireless network. But inflammatory terms like "moron" should probably be reserved for real morons, like George W. Bush.

Bob

Why do I suspect the original poster is the "other people" and he wants to know what trouble he will get into hijacking someone else's network.

Potentially yes , although I doubt it is yet tested , I suggest you learn to use some form of protection .

If it is than he needs to remember his mac will mark his machine for life.

"G. Mack" hath wroth:

I really don't know. The ISP's are responsible under the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) for removing copyrighted material from their servers, but are not responsible for transit violations because they don't "monitor" the traffic contents. You could claim that you're actually an ISP and use ignorance of content as an excuse. Whether a jury of those lacking in sufficient intelligence to get out of doing jury duty will believe such a defense is rather marginal.

This might help: Don?t Shoot the Messenger! A Discussion of ISP Liability

A better question is are the various wireless router manufacturers liable for damages to your computer system if you operate the router using the defaults, as you apparently are doing, and some hacker (like me) dives into your computer and does evil and dastardly deeds. You could again claim ignorance and contend that the manufacturers are responsible for your inept and insecure product operation. This has worked in many product liability cases, where the operation and setup instructions were deemed insufficient to prevent a complete idiot from doing damage to themselves.

like most things - it depends, at a minimum on where you live since the laws are going to vary by jurisdiction.

there are some practical issues which you should think about which may be more worrying, depending on what you do with your PC and where you live:

is "no encryption" basically an invitation to use the system - ie you are inviting an outsider to use your system and so giving permission? Hint - an SSID like "free hotspot" may well be giving permission (no idea what the answer is - definitely one for a lawyer)

how do you convince the police when they turn up and kick down the door that it wasnt you? After all if you do nothing there wont be any logs, so proving it may be difficult. And will the judge / law / etc care since accepting such an argument makes such rules much less easy to enforce?

does your ISP care? ie they will turn off your account anyway, since all they worry about is whether you broke their T&Cs?

if someone can get to your wireless LAN, did they get at your PC as well and place a trojan etc so they now have your bank details, Paypal passwords and so on?

so - time for a bit of encryption?

The main thing you will have to contend with is that they have a large warchest and excessive powers because of the DMCA to find/accuse you. Someone could assert any/all of those things but they would need to hire an extra pricey lawyer to defend themselves.

The same thought crossed my mind. A thoughtful person might be saying "how do I secure my network so I don't get in trouble..."

Which is trivial to change.

Yes and no. You have no obligation to secure your network, just as you've no obligation to lock your car. Being stupid isn't against the law.

On the other hand, if someone takes your car and uses it in a robbery, then you'll be the first people the cops visit. The evidence will point to you - vehicle seen at the crime, blood in the back, etc. You'll need to provide an alibi. No Alibi - problems...

Same applies to your network. Its an offense for someone else to use it without your permission, no matter whether your secure it or not. However if a crime is committed, your name will be on the rap sheet, until you can provide an alibi .Thats _much_ harder with a computer network since after all you don't even need to be in the country for your computer to download stuff for you.

Brilliant, Bob... Simply Brilliant.

In Ontario and Quebec, and I'm sure in a lot of jurisdictions, you _are_ legally obligated to lock your car. Cops occasionally go around shopping center parking lots ticketing unlocked cars.

I got few old computers running 802.11B still. They work fine for browsing the web, but wireless interfaces don't support encryption and the computer is slow to enable s/w encryption. I wonder why I don't hear about businesses that run hot spots going to court for liability issues?

As far as hijacking someone else's network, that's pretty much trivial and almost impossible for anyone to catch unless I actually access my email or something.

On 5 Feb 2007 09:56:17 -0800, "G. Mack" wrote in :

ISPs are now protected from liability by law.

WPA with a strong passphrase prevents hijacking.

Actually pretty easy to catch if the network is running intrusion detection.