Would a firewall have protected Jammie Thomas from being sued by the RIAA Safenet

But you gotta remember that this was the person talking about "all 49 states".. geography (or counting) doesn't appear to be a strong suit.

No, it was Texas...we seceded and formed our own planet.

This could have saved her, perhaps?

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The only way to do it is to go to a pubic wi-fi place to download. You will be safe then.

Only if they don't keep logs. Since a MAC is unique, if the public WI-FI spot was to register your MAC before giving you the key, you would be no safer.

To allow anonymous access is stupid.

The MAC usually can be changed ;-)

Juergen Nieveler

Your original post was "49 states in the Union", whereas the Union is the United Sates of America...there are 50 states in the Union

Your road map simply does not show off the states in the Union, only those on the North American land mass.

Got it? Good.

You are an idiot. Got it? Good.

PS: Can you list those Canadian provinces for us? And what is that elusive 49th state that you've found on "the landmass of North America?"

You truly are n idiot. Got it? Good. Bloody foreigners.

The landmass of NA would include Alaska, which is my guess. I thought it was a rather inelegant backpedal, but there it is.

And they say the US struggles with reading maps.

Is this the recommended procecedure for "anonymous" public hot spot?

1. Find public hot spot (using
   formatting link
   Turn off your wireless transmitter & go to that public hotspot
2. Change your MAC address to DEADBEEFCAFE (using MacMakeUp freeware)
3. Change your PC name (My Computer, Properties, Computer Name)
4. Change your login ID (create one for this session only)
5. Set up your (encrypted?) sandbox (sandboxie or truecrypt freeware)
6. ??? anything else ???
7. Start your browser sandboxed or on an encrypted disk
8. When done, turn off your wireless transmitter again.
9. Return all settings back to normal (non hotspot settings)

Are we safe if we follow these ten easy hotspot steps?

Yes, it can, but most people don't have a clue.

The US struggles with spelling (and most likely reading and writing).

Isn't the best way to be safe simply not to do illegal stuff with a wireless hotspot connection?

Launch a VPN client.

Even if it's only some free service like SecureIX, it will help preventing people in the direct vicinity to snoop your traffic.

Juergen Nieveler

anthropomorphically speaking

-Craig

Yep. But you also want to stop other people from doing illegal stuff with the data they stole from your legal connection...

If you use a public hotspot in a Starbucks or something like that, the connection is either unencrypted, or everybody knows the key (otherwise it wouldn't be public, after all).

Hence, everything you send over Wifi can be sniffed by people - if you access your POP3-mailbox using the normal protocol instead of POP3-SSL, everybody within radio range can read your username and password, and the contents of your mail. Same for non-HTTPS-webtraffic...

Juergen Nieveler

X-No-Archive: Yes

Well, with the ability to run a newspaper or radio station on the Internet, it is not uncommon for these "citizen journalists", working for these smaller outlets to hijack nearby wireless access points. And one way to avoid being identified through your MAC number is to purchase your equiipment with cash. That way there is no credit card or bank account data that can be traced to you. As a small webcaster, our radio station does do this quite often. We purchase all equipment with petty cash, so there is NOTHING that can be traced to our radio station, if they should ever try and trace any MAC numbers back to their owners. This allows us to even hijack wireless connections in Britain or Canada, despite it being illegal in both countries, and being that the equipment was paid for out of petty cash, there is no credit card or bank account trail that can be traced back to our radio station. Although the British laws on this are the most strict, there are no major figure skating events likely to be in Britain now unitil at least 2010, and that is only if Sheffield succeeds in its bid to get the World Championships.

That is the one weakness with relying on MAC addresses to indentify people who connect to your wireless access points. If the equipment was purchased with cash, there there is no credit card or bank account trail that will trace back to the equipment's owner(s).

Because:

Somebody who knows your MAC and has access to the wifi gear at the hotspot could trace your whereabouts.

Anybody with access to the WLAN-router can see what devices are connected. If you're in a small cybercafe that runs their own equipment, that would probably mean it's just the technical staff there who can do that.

If, however, the hotspot technology is provided by a large ISP (The Cloud, Fon, T-Com, whatever...), they could simply collect every new MAC that hooks up to one of their Wifi devices in a huge database which would allow them to say "The machine with that MAC was seen in the Starbucks in London-Heathrow at X o'clock on the Yth December, and was next seen in a deli in New York in January".

Juergen Nieveler