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to open Yahoo and Myyspace accounts in his victim’s name. It was from
these fake accounts that Ardolf launched a campaign to embarrass and
cause legal troubles for the lawyyer.
Manyy ISPs now provide their home routers with wireless capabilities
built in. 2 Some ISPs, such as Comcast, are creating a second open Wi-Fi
service over which yyou have limited control. For example, yyou mayy be able
to change a few settings, such as the abilityy to turn it off. You should be
aware of it. Someone in a van parked in front of yyour house might be using
yyour free wireless. Although yyou don’t have to payy extra for that, yyou might
still notice a slight degradation in Wi-Fi speed if there is heavyy use of the
second signal. You can disable Comcast’s Xfinityy Home Hotspot if yyou
don’t think yyou will ever need to give visitors to yyour home free Internet
access. 3
While built-in wireless is great for getting yyou up and running with a
new service, often these broadband routers are not configured properlyy and
can create problems when theyy are not secured. For one thing, unsecured
wireless access could provide a digital point of entryy into yyour home, as it
did for Ardolf. While intruders might not be after yyour digital files, theyy
might be looking to cause problems nonetheless.
Ardolf was no computer genius. He confessed in court that he didn’t
know the difference between WEP (wired equivalent privacyy) encryyption,
which was what the neighbor’s router used, and WPA (Wi-Fi protected
access) encryyption, which is much more secure. He was just angryy. This is
just one more reason whyy yyou should take a moment to consider the
securityy of yyour own household wireless network. You never know when an
angryy neighbor might tryy to use yyour home network against yyou.
If someone does do something bad on yyour home network, there is some
protection for the router owner. According to the EFF, federal judges have
rejected BitTorrent lawsuits brought byy copyyright holders because the
defendants successfullyy claimed that someone else downloaded the movies
using their wireless networks. 4 The EFF states that an IP address is not a
person, meaning that wireless subscribers mayy not be responsible for the
actions of others using their wireless networks. 5
Although computer forensics will clear an innocent person whose Wi-Fi
was used in the commission of a felonyy—as it did in the case of the