A couple days ago I was playing WoW and getting funky lag spikes to the point of disconnection. No online programs would work except the web. We were auot forarded to Time warners warning page that we were in violation of TOS, blah blah, run virus scan, ect. We did and went back to (seemingly) normal. Today, while I was at work, the wife texts me "Internet cutoff for illegal activity." Seems they want a format or "professional service" to rectify the situation before they restore service. I walk her through cleaning hers(she REALLY needed it anyway.) And she disconnected mine from the router. When I got home she was back up and running so i logged into the (Linksys BEFW11S4) Wireless Access Point Router. Yeah, I forgot to disable WAN. I check the log and its spitting crap to dozens of mail servers. From a third connection : Deanscpu. So yeah, I about lost my internet to someone elses infected computer. Question now is :what can I do about it. I want to find this Dean and make him fix his crap. Any suggestions?

do this. then go around and ask your neighbors if their internet is messed up.

(for those who don't want to look at the page, it tells you how to flip the images upside down)

so many poor souls playing WoW, i think you're better off now. but anyways get another internet service and lock down your router this time.

yeah you really should put a password on your wireless.

you should really secure your wireless. Just don't bother using WEP it is useless. Use WPA2 instead.

get a wired router if you have a problem with that in a area IMO.
just as software is made, there is a way around or through it.

well first encrypt and password your wifi man. If you really want to find this person, ask your neighbors if they are Dean, sure you might not get it on the first try but eventually you might. But really I would just lock your wireless down, it's much easier going to your neighbors and asking, "Are you Dean? Have you been using my Internet?"

Sorry if I play devil's advocate...but, you are 100% responsible for this. You chose not to encrypt your wireless (is it really that difficult? seriously?). My mom has WPA on our router, and she's as computer savvy as a billboard (sorry Mom).

Not sure what you intend to do to fix this guys computer...but you could change your wireless network name to "YOU HAVE A VIRUS"

He might get the point.

I wouldn't even think of setting up a wireless network without setting up some sort of security... you wouldn't believe how many people drive down the road and go:

"Hmmm.... I need internet"

*Drives to the nearest sub-division and parks...*

"Schweet... 9 unsecured connections! Now where's serialkillerstalkers.ca"

/me raises hand a few times when lost and out of town

I know that for sure. I have myself to blame. I'm not using the wifi, and I had the antennas off at one point, but stupidly forgot to disable it within the router. WEP wasn't setup either, as when I did use it I lived in a fairly remote area and never even caught a glimpse of any other traffic in the air. Now I live in a dense residential area, and surly should take those simple precautions. After all, though, I was amused with the amout of traffic deancpu was generating, and I am glad that TW brought it to my attention.

x100

I like flareback's link though.

I would prefer flarebacks link though. I'd rather mess with people.

speaking of "free" wireless i just walked down my block with my laptop and picked up over 10 networks unlocked i should really stop paying for internet..

are any of the routers using default passwords? that could get fun.

If I find wireless routers like that I change the broadcast ID to "Secure this router please." It usually catches all but the most oblivious users and they change within a few days.

lol nice approach



I live in an apt. complex, and I can see a ton of unencrypted wireless connections... it's insane. And being in the same building they are all giving a pretty damn good signal too lol. But it's also technically a theft of service, which is a federal offense IIRC, if you use someone else's wireless connection without their consent.

Personally I use nothing less than WPA/TKIP and a 16 digit password, and I also hide my SSID so others cannot see it. If I do need to see it, I just log into the router on another machine then hide it again.

TW will also send warnings if you are dl'ing huge files, viruses, spamming, et cetera et cetera. So heavy torrenters watchout as well, but you really have to be doing some major dl'ing AND uploading to catch there attention on that front from what I can tell.

This may not even be legal to discuss; the usage of someone elses internet.

However I can say that if I lived near any open wireless networks that I would use them all the fricken' time!

I might even snoop a bit...
j/k I would never do that...

Almost akin to snooping around on limewire back in the day.
P2P programs quite often auto share your entire My Documents folders, back in the day I would search by IP and come across come pretty interesting stuff...
(pictures & videos obviously but quite often I'd find text files, pdfs, excell fies, powerpoin files, programs, everything)

A guy I work with got a nasty message from his internet provider one day regarding the illegal downloading of movies. Aparently he had downloaded movies that were still in the theaters etc... He called them back and got in a heated battle over what he had done, and NOT done. They sent out a tech to his house and found that his internet router was a wired/wireless and he hadn't realized his wireless was NOT password protected. One of his neighbors had been leeching off him, but yet he's the one that got the finger pointed at him. After a call to Linksys, his wireless is now password protected and he hasn't had any problems. He still wants to find out which neighbor was doing it though....

Yeah I don't even plug the WAN in until I have everything locked down when I do a new install........anything less is just bad form