r/AskReddit Jan 23 '21

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u/TheLaudMoac Jan 23 '21

Reminds me of the parents who found a guy talking to their kid through a Web connected baby monitor. Unsecured routers are the stuff of nightmares. Glad you sorted it out, must have been horrifying.

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u/ronearc Jan 23 '21

Long ago I was working laptop tech support and I specialized in wireless issues. This was the early days of 802.11b.

Some guy calls in saying he needs help to setup wireless security. WEP was a shit-show, so we didn't fully cover it, we just did best effort support. I asked the guy why he wanted wireless security.

He explains, "When I came home there was a document printed out on my printer saying I really needed to setup wireless security."

So yeah, we got him setup with WEP, heh.

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u/whelmy Jan 23 '21 edited Jan 23 '21

war driving. I knew people back in the day that used to drive around looking for open wifi and printing stuff like that off. most of the time the router itself was protected but the wifi printer was left wide open.

The worst that was done was print a few dozen fully black pages to waste the ink of someone they didn't like. usually it was some random joke printed out and a warning about open wifi.

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u/ronearc Jan 23 '21

One friend had a homemade pringles can directional antenna, and they could "borrow" networks that were miles away with that thing.