ISP Disconnects Customers with Open WiFi
Written by Ernesto on November 02, 2008Open 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.
Open wireless networks can be found on every street corner. Some people leave their network open, simply because they are clueless about how to secure it. Others don’t mind that others use their network to access the Internet, or use a router that enables them to share Internet access safely with others.
In copyright infringement cases, having an unsecured wireless router creates plausible deniability. 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 material. Because anyone could have accessed the network, it is impossible to prove that the defendant was the one who shared files illegally.
Not all ISPs are happy with customers who have open WiFi, however, and some even threaten to disconnect those who do. In the September 2008 terms and conditions of UK ISP Karoo, we read (pdf):
“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.”
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 our requests for comment.
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65 Responses
UK SUCKS ! ! !
I Never Liked UK ! ! !
Big Brother lives in England
The talk like secure lines are actually secure give me a break Even if your wireless is “secure” it is not nearly 100%
So, if you invite friends over and they use your wireless, are they “third parties”?
LOL? that absolutely stupid…
Way to shoot yourself in the foot Karoo.
People, its time to help TF spread the word of this anti-consumer ISP.
ISP’s sells a good, and have absolutely no right to tell it’s costumers what to do and not do with what they paid for.
Car dealers don’t tell their costumers that they have to return their car if they leave it unlocked, do they?
This is just silly.
The point above about cars is stupid: they’re completely different products (services in this case) and situations. ISP have this policy for a number of reasons, one being they want to sell internet access to people who may not be in the market if they can use they’re neighbours Wi-Fi to access internet.
Seeing as I dont use this ISP I could care less in any case – but am I the only one that thinks it’s a stupid idea to leave your Wi-Fi open to anyone to use?
Aside from anything else if someone accesses xcopyrighted material, child porn or mounts a hacking attack from your access point it’d just be a pain in the ass to defend oneself, regardless of the outcome of that defence.
The DVLA doesn’t stop you letting your friends drive your car on public highways, do they? In a similar vein, you can’t be held liable if they cause a massive pile-up using your car, can you?
Idiots.
FUD!!!
This is bullshit, they can’t tell if your Wifi is open. What will they do? Send trucks through the cities looking for open hot spots? And then log onto that illegally to find out what IP it is and if that is registered with their service. This is complete bullshit, can never be enforced and thus virtually non-existant.
Just read on people … nothing to see here. Really, nothing!
Who the Fcuk are Karoo anyway?
Karoo is only the isp for east yorkshire, hull and around there.
it does not cover the whole of the uk and they have always had some strange ideas…..
knowing Karoo its a fook up by them cos half their staff have no clue whats happening lol
quote
What will they do? Send trucks through the cities looking for open hot spots?
would not surprise me they do not have much ground to cover as its just 1 county they are isp for…
The above isp provider only supplies to the Hull area, this is a problem for Hull as its the only service provider there because its parent company Kingston Communications owns the the lines not BT. There policy is that if you are caught with copyrighted material you are disconnected straight away a letter is sent in the post you sign it saying that you’ve deleted the offending file then they will reconnected.Only persistent offenders have there connection terminated for good. By the way their service is crap because they treat Hull as a easy cash cow and put very limited investment into the infrastructure.
Sounds like their service is crap because there’s no competition actually…
Is Hull a low socio-economic area ?
I quess only reason why they do this is, because ppl using those wireless routers, increase their traffic, which makes costs for them, because they sell more bandwitch than they actually have (Something reminds me of Comcast…)
If I would have Karoo as my isp, I would change my isp immediately. (or take Karoo to court if they fuck with me^^)
No other isp’s want to come here because Kingston Communications charge high rent for the lines and exchanges and it would cost millions for other isp’s to install there equipment in KC’S exchanges and who would want to sell a service on these crap cables, but we live in hope, maybe some one will be bold enough and Karoo would be dust. Is there hope no i don’t think so!!!!!
Seems like a good time to make Karoo lose all its business.
Roze
the big problem is that karoo have a monopoly. there is no other wired (broadband) isp in hull. they have a total monopoly, so we cant all just cancel our contracts unless we want to end up with 5gig limit mobile broadband.
anyone know what those of us stuck on this isp can do? i’d love to hear it!
Good. Retards should learn how to secure their shit. Not to stop freetards from leeching on their connection but because your a complete idiot if you allow any moron access to your network.
@18
No, it is good to have an unsecured wireless. Not everybody is a moron. Even if you allow morons, there are a lot more non-morons who you allow.
Roze
http://www.10ch.org/
this is stupid alot of people use wep encryption which sucks and is easy to break and how would they know the difference between if someones wifi was hacked or if it was open all ready
Hell why not just stick a few wired hubs in your outside wall. While your at it stick a post-it-note to it with your bank account and credit card details. Save them the trouble of spending the 20 seconds it would take to crack your shit wide open by allowing unrestricted access to your local network. Retard.
everyone sign our petition to allow fair compeition for users in hull
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/OfcomHull/
Boycott that company. and encourage others to do so to.
Announce and hold a meeting for broadband users, and elect a spokesperson to speak to Karoo.
If Karoo won’t back down on the disconnect clause, you will all change to 5GB-limit mobile broadband for half a year.
If Karoo is stupid enough to let that happen, they will suddenly find themselves with very few customers and very likely bankrupt.
Then, you can buy Karoo for small change, and decide the terms in contract yourselves.
In the long term, it would be better if you just bankrupted and bought Karoo without giving them a chance to back down.
agree with 8 and 18.
I did sign the partition though.
@23
Question: who will announce it? How shall a meeting be planned?
Roze
seriously i didnt know companies can be so retarded. HUMAN RIGHTS people. LOL
@8 yes one is tanglibe good one is tanglible service.
BUT
GM would not MAKE you use there parts and service and if you did not then you would have to return the car!!
Ya know how many customized cars there are!! YOU’D have a riot oh wait, thats what this thread is beginning….
Also the ISPS are now treating the service as though it were a consumable good not a service where the customer ( not consumer ) is always right. They are like one post i read NOT in things to make money for long term they want short quick profits and that type a greed and capitalism is what has the world in the mess it is in.
would not 10% profit or 15% be enough for you? These people want 100, 200 , 500%.
AND MARK MY WORDS, ONE DAY IT WILL OCME CRASHNG DOWN ON HTEM LIKE HTE STOCKMARTS AROUND THE WORLD ARE.
These oil investors are looking for all kinds a places ot hide and make insane cash. Prob is when none of you can afford things then what? A price hike?
Technology UNTIL 2000 was making everything cheaper, add hollywood greed and oil greed together and they are eating all the advancements and with insane lengths of copyright that NO LONGER BENEFIT MANKIND they are driving humanity to the brink of annihilation.
YES folks we aren’t going ot make it on earth, the way we are going. All because of a few thousands uber greedy people.
I’ll update this in 5 years and see if i am right. I predicted the fall of russia 15 years before it happened. Econimies cannot sustain this. And where the hell are we going to migrate all the people on coast lines when the sea rises 200 feet? YOUR FARM? oh gee , um
WHERES MY PIZZA
http://www.faircopyrightforcanada.ca/
perhaps its time that the UK got a chapter for faircopyright, like we did in canada?
I am the eastern ontario chair.
we have over 100,000 members at our facebook in support.
Perhaps get your printers going and really show them.
your govt used leaflets during world war II to fight facists, now you have a new type a facist to fight. DONT GIVE IN GET ACTIVE
gross
Boycott these motherfuckers.
If no one’s using their services, they wouldn’t BE there in the first place.
This is pretty standard (at least in my country). The reason is that ISPs routinely oversell their capacity on the cheaper DSL packages and if the DSL line is shared by many people, the load is much heavier than if just one household uses it.
lol, theres commercial software where you can crack WPA and WPA2 as easy like WEP last year :P So you should be able to say that someone else accesed your router without your permission and schouldn’t have to rely on the “open wireless defense”
shhitty business strategy if you ask me, its like theyre saying “no we dont want your money”
So using WEP is banned as well? It sure as hell SHOULD be (crackable in under a minute with no knowledge at all!)… :/
Guys & Gals !
This is Karoo. They dont give a shite coz they own the Telco in HULL. There is NO other ISP/telco provider in Hull.
There is no COMPETITION.
Go speak to a hull-ian. they think karoo sux valls but what u gonna do?
@22 shut up your obviously an idiot .If you [one who apparently knows everything] want to leave your network unencrypted then you do that. i will be laughing when you find that half your internet accounts hotmail, gmail, facebook, etc have been pwned by some script kiddy who used wireshark to retrieve the passwords from your unencrypted wireless traffic. Besides theres no reason not to try to encrypt your connection you are aware additional measures can be taken to further stump wifi-freeloaders even if they break your key you can frustrate them to the point where they will leave and go somewhere else. I would go into a rant about iptables and stuff but your obviously too retarded and mouthy to understand what im talking about so i wont. The only retards are those who knowingly fail to encrypt their wireless networks which means that you are also a retard.
“Some people leave their network open, simply because they are ” good citizens and wish to share excess capacity.
Heres an idea. Like the other hundreds of morons here just set your WPA password to “password”.
There are lots of ISP’s dump these Scrooges and move on to a sharebear ISP. Why the freaking hell should they care…is anyone holding THEM responsible for what their subscribers do with their account. Dump ‘em, move onto to a non “big brother” ISP. :) “Sharing is Caring” :)
Those terms are clearly unfair, and I’m sure that anyone who needs to challenge it in court probably has a good chance at winning.
As others on here suggest, it is time for consumers to start demanding fair treatment from these bully corporations.
I’m amazed at how many people posting comments here are so uninformed about WPA. If you use a strong password (like 32 random alpha-numerics), nobody can crack it unless they have all the computing power on the planet at their disposal for a few million years.
Another moron implied that ‘you might as well post your credit card and bank acct numbers on a post-it note outside your house.’ Another retard. I guess he’s never heard of SSL. You can run an open wireless access point and NOBODY is going to be able to see what is going on in a SSL connection.
It’s truly stunning how stupid people don’t let their lack of knowledge get in the way of posting total nonsense all over the place.
And BTW, just because an ISP has this policy doesn’t mean you can’t use the wireless defence. You don’t ACTUALLY have to be running an open access point, just have the router unplugged in your desk drawer just in case. The ISP will stay happy and you’ll still be able to claim no knowledge of the infringement.
I’ve been in IT 22 years (old fart that I am), and I deliberatley decided to NOT secure my wireless, for a few reasons;
1: old access point – only did WEP – so pointless, and trivial to break.
2: limited range, not close to the street, so war-driving would be limited
3: Kindness – I am on an _actual_ unlimited plan, so it’s no skin off my nose
4: Some of my wireless devices are a bit old and can’t do any more than WEP – again, WEP = Pointless
Now I have a new access-point/wireless router, it’s still unsecured and I’ll keep it that way…
Plus, after reading teh article, there’s the added bonus of plausable deniability if any questions of copyright infringement come up…
No security is better than a false sense of security…
new initiative:
everyone should have the same password for open networks……
I have never even heard of this ISP in all the years I have had an internet connection, so they must be a rather small ISP.
This will only reduce the small number of customers they already have, and to be brutally honest I doubt they will disconnect a single customer.
As far as I can determine, this is simply an appeasement to the anti-piracy organisations.
How do they propose to find these unsecured wireless networks? Employ a thousand more staff, buy a ton of vans and drive around to each customers house? I seriously doubt this.
What are they going to make you do? Enforce you to atleast use WEP? Let say I get caught sharing music or something, I can just say that my WEP encryption was hacked? I do this all the time to test networks. VERY Simple with aircrack. Does this count as plausible deniability? I can get away with it then huh?
hey enigmax/ernesto how about an article on the idiocy of my old ISP, eircom.
they useed a very very stupid system to encrypt, and now there is a keygen floating on all public trackers, that brakes the default WEP.
and this is ireland so me and my friends are raping every line i find.
hassle free :)
Living in hull myself, i can tell you theres no other internet provider, karoo has a monopoly.
They can force whatever policies they like, if you dont agree, you dont get internet, simple as.
Most of these comments arent aware of the situation with karoo.
The reason you havent heard of them, is that they only operate in the hull area, where they are the solo internet provider on kingston lines.
They enforce whatever they like, they dont lose customers or go bankrupt, simply because if your not with karoo, your not with internet.
To reiterate the comment above, there is NO COMPETITION to Karoo in the Hull area, unless you want to try one of the newer 3G services that is.
Hull council retained the rights to it’s own telecoms network (was the last to be able to do so) before privatising it as Kingston Comms. Karoo is the ISP arm of that company.
It isn’t down to socio-economics or anything like that (this also covers Beverley which is a very affluent market town)
As has been said they do not allow other providers to install equipment in their own exchanges without series amounts of cash exchanging hands. Nobody is interested, although I do think AOL tried to implement something before been bought out by CW.
When ADSL was starting to become mainstream it could take up to 4 months to get a connection (( was working for a regeneration project in the East of the city at the time and it was a nightmare)
They COULD have some of the best connectivity in the North East, but they don’t.
Fortunately, this is, AFAIK, the only place in the UK where this scenario is taking place.
wow what a horrible isp..
il run my wireless router in whatever mode i please thank you.
sad to see such stupidity.
Karoo is only available in one city in the UK, Hull who have their own phone company called Kingston.
The worst part is that people in Hull have no other choice when it comes to broadband as no other company chooses to provide it there, so if you get cut off from Karoo you can’t have wired broadband again, ever!
That company will get *nowhere* trying to enforce this.
BTW, “pros” and “cons” are not possessives; their plurals do not take apostrophes.
All you have to do is make your router name thepasswordis_____. Secure your router, but people can still get into it if they want. Ta da!
@anonymous – ‘is hull a low socio-economic area’? hahah oh boy, is it ever. it’s situated on the lowland flood plain at the mouth of the Humber estuary looking out on to the North Sea. It’s in serious danger of flooding, especially if climate change accelerates sea level rises. the uk govt’s tacit policy is to let it flood, and in fact it nearly did last year. harsh as it may sound this would be the best thing for the place. karoo is just one of the many utterly crap things about hull. i went to uni there and like all my alumni have fled its environs. hull fails to hold any of its graduates, its a stagnant cesspit frankly. sadly karoo provide internet ’service’ to the surrounding smaller conurbations in east yorkshire like beverley so everyone gets to suffer under this appalling monopoly. it sounds self-pitying but in all honest hull is such a shit hole no-one, and i mean NO-ONE with help us. Even the bureaucrats of the European Union have turned there back on us. Karoo is a significant factor holding back the development of what is a major uk city, but were’ still left to rot locked in this stinking cage with the foul beast.
everyone use this name for the wifi pass is karoo, and then use pass “karoo”,
you are protected but they cannot close your account.
Karoo is the monopoly ISP for Hull, if you live in hull and use a landline based ISP, there is 1 phone company and 1 ISP.
For some reason mobile dongles are selling very well :)
Easy, don’t use Karoo, write to them to tell them why, and then say goodbye, vote with your money!
Hey guys, sorry, I work in the abuse department for an ISP in the states, and if its in the Terms of Service, then our subscribers have agreed to it by taking our service. Typically whatever is connected to our modem is the customer’s responsibility, but if they have open WiFi and someone else connects to their network, they are responsible for what happens, whether it be spamming, or illegal downloading, etc., we shut them down for that. I doubt Karoo has the resources to actively monitor each and every customer’s equipment and see if they have open WiFi connected, rather it would be more of a hand caught in the cookie jar if anything was to ever come up with their connection.
No probl guys!
Whowann leave free your wi-fi spot can re-nominate it with a pass like: Karoo
You “have” do it! All the people know about them… Enjoy!
Ha if u can’t perfectly secure ur wifi(which is impossible even with the security standards of today) you don’t deserve to have the internet. Same with all u bastard that download stuff.
@76 YOU HAS TEH INTERNETS?
Karoo can kiss my ass. Who the fuck are they? With this story, their servers will crash as they are probably not used to more than 3 visitors a day. They can enforce they crazy ass rules all they want.
The only reason I suspect the ISP are doing this, is not because of file sharing. But because of the bandwidth there losing to none paying customers. And just using this as an excuse.
http://www.aquariumfish.me
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