The Members Forum

Last week, my next-door neighbor rang my bell and asked if he could use my Wi-Fi for the night. Sure! No problem! But he's still poking around on my network right now. Why are you still on my network, neighbor?

Let's get one thing straight: I'm fully committed to being a good neighbor. I make sure the guests at my bacchanalia don't get too rowdy, I don't leave my trash sitting out before trash day, and I play my music at a reasonable volume.

And while it's not like we nosh on a regular basis, my neighbors and I always have a nice chat when we cross paths on the stairway. We're friendly! So last week when Steve—we'll call him Steve—told me that the thunderstorm raging outside had knocked his internet out and asked if he could use mine for the night, I didn't hesitate to lend a hand. But things were already kind of awkward! Let me back up a bit.

Steve and his girlfriend had borrowed my internet for a week or so a few months back when they switched from Verizon to DirecTV. It turned out that Steve worked from home, too, so I developed the vague and probably unfounded notion that he was using up precious bandwidth as I went about my important Gizmodo business, but generally things went without incident. Steve and his girlfriend used my internet for about a week, bought me a six-pack of beer for my trouble, and that was that. Good neighbor mission accomplished!

But apparently the mission wasn't over just yet. After the beer-gift had been given, I'd still see Steve's MacBook pop up from time to time in my network's list of Shared Places. I assumed it was due to some inadvertent connection on his part, but his computer started showing up so regularly over the following few weeks that I decided it had to be deliberate. And soon it had me pretty incensed! Like who was this guy, thinking he could just waltz on over to my Wi-Fi whenever he pleased? I imagined him determinedly switching to my network when it was time to download his dozen-gigabyte Blu-ray images or the weirder varieties of porn he enjoyed. And while I was fine letting him visit my network in a time of need, I didn't think that I should have to hand him the keys to the whole goddamn castle. So I changed my password. That was that.

Gizmodo has the details HERE!