Broadband News

7m homes exposed to wifi hijacking

Wednesday, 21 October 2009

Garnet Roach garnet@consumerchoices.co.uk

As many as 7 million homes and small business could be at risk of being wrongly disconnected from the internet because of vulnerable wifi connections, it has been claimed.

TalkTalk Broadband (www.Talktalk.co.uk) has launched a campaign against Lord Mandelson’s plans to disconnect people suspected of illegal filesharing without a trial, after a study by the ISP found that 5% of wireless broadband connections were completely open with no password or security.

36% used the easily hackable WEP security, 56% used WPA, which is fairly secure, though a vulnerability has already been discovered, and only 3% used the latest WPA2 form of protection.

TalkTalk’s Don’t Disconnect Us (www.Dontdisconnect.us) campaign sets out the provider's three main objections to Lord Mandelson’s plans:

• It by-passes the courts and gives rightsholders quasi-judicial powers
• It exposes millions of people to false prosecution since it is based on an approach where those suspected of illegal filesharing will be presumed guilty and have to prove their innocence in order to avoid being falsely disconnected
• It will do little to tackle illegal filesharing since the main offenders will easily avoid detection by using other people’s broadband connections to download content or encrypting their activity. Indeed the proposed measures will increase wifi and PC hijacking and so increase even further the chances of innocent customers being wrongly cut off

The Don’t Disconnect Us website offers views on tackling illegal filesharing, a forum to discuss the issues and a link to a petition on the No 10 website.

Michael Phillips, Broadbandchoices.co.uk product director, said: “There has been a huge reaction against the Government’s filesharing proposals, and many flaws have been highlighted in the plans. Rather than risk criminalising innocent people, the Government needs to encourage content providers to look for alternative business models that will tempt illegal downloaders away from peer to peer networks.”

“If you're worried about your wireless internet security, make sure you upgrade to the latest encryption method - WPA2 - which offers the best protection, and make sure that you have up to date internet security installed on your computer. Use our free Wireless key Generator to create unique, hard to crack passwords,” he advised.

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