Talk:Wardriving

message: I read that newer passports can be read by wardrivers and the identity stolen without
you showing your passport to the wardriver, any terms from that?
RGDS
Alexmcfire
:Do you have a citation for this? Perhaps what you read about was detecting RFID chips. Those chips aren't wireless networks, and therefore someone detecting them wouldn't be wardriving anymore than a person carrying a geiger counter. --Goldfndr 09:55, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Stealing someones identity by wardriving?

message: In the "Ethical Considerations" section, casual mention is made to it being normal for wardrivers to engage in what is most probably a crime (accessing open wireless networks and 'stealing' bandwidth).  I think that this should be handled with caution, as I personally don't think this falls under "Wardriving" and although it's related, and should be discussed in the article, it shouldn't be dropped in there with no education for the reader.  Any thoughts? godsmoke 16:56, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, piggybacking/tapping may be performed by leeches after wardriving, but most (if not all) wardriving software must be exited before piggybacking. For example, NetStumbler will encounter all sorts of trouble if one tries to use it and a Wireless client simultaneously, and I'm guessing the same would happen with Kismet, not sure about Kismac or others. For this reason (inability to wardrive and piggyback simultaneously), I'm reverting the past two days edits and spelling it out more clearly. --Goldfndr 06:08, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reference to using open access points 

message: "War driving is often a surreptitious activity: this long-range wardriver leaves only his shadow."
a) How surreptitious can you be with a whacking great directional antenna on your vehicle?
b) What's with the comic book captioning?
All in all I find the picture and it's caption a complete joke. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.178.255.149 (talk • contribs) 08:53, 22 September 2005
:So, looking at the history I see the picture was also removed by User:Noitall who has aparently taken up a campaign against me because I supported the deletion of some non-sourced probable copyvio images which he supported keeping. I guess you happened to sumble into the bad luck of appearing right after noitall took a break from editing logged in, and making edits simmlar in style to his...   I think the quality of the picture is poor myself. I took it 4 years ago to illustrate a presentation I did on wireless security, and found it again while scanning through content I could contribute to articles.  The caption is factually accurate and even that case the activity was surreptitious as we were accessing a network miles away, although when juxtaposed with the image it is somewhat humerous. As a result, although the image is poor, we have recieved a great number of compliments about it.   I would fully support set of better illustrations for the article, but the subject can actually be a challenge to illustrate well.  Do we just show a car to illustrate wardriving? Or just some laptop with kismet? .. I have a number of other pictures we could use, but none of them are that good, most are somewhat silly, and most of the other pictures that show mobile wireless activity include people, which I prefer to avoid for Wikipedia illustrations.  I thought the big honking antenna did a reasonable job, and I'd encourage you to create a better image rather than just leave the article imageless. If you need help creating an account so you can upload your results, please contact me on my talk page. --Gmaxwell 03:37, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, and note on humor. It is clear that humor is quite acceptable in Wikipedia, as long as it doesn't stand in the way of our encyclopedic goals. See articles like exploding whale or many other subjects in Wikipedia:Unusual_articles. --Gmaxwell 04:26, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I like the photo, but I don't think it's a good fit for an encyclopedia article. A better image would be a direct shot of the vehicle + antenna. But the caption, certainly, reads either as being exceedingly pretentious, or (hopefully) just plain ironic. — Matt Crypto 09:00, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

text: It looks just like a joke to me. zachol 02:16, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Eh, no. As I said above. It's intended to be thought provoking. With the amount of gain behind that antenna it would be trivial to access networks a great distance away. So that rig is simultaniously obvious and surreptitious. --Gmaxwell 06:38, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

text: This picture is listed on BJAODN, but is still in the article.  Doesn't bad jokes and other 'deleted' nonsense mean that it has been deleted? --Phantom784 00:51, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Nah, because it's actually an informative picture as well. Though there are better places than bjaodn for that kinda thing...  The caption is completely accurate, but the duality of the image (hidden because he's far away, but obvious because he's got a huge honking antenna) make it funny. --Gmaxwell 01:08, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Yeah. When I saw it, I came to the discussion with the intent to praise the caption. So: I love it. — mæstro t/c, 09:49, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't suppose we could get a picture of the sidewalk markings some wardrivers leave for others to know about the network.Doric Nash 18:48, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ridiculous Picture 

message: Warbiking redirects to here, but there is a link to it on the page, under "see also." Should either be another article, or at least a mention of Warbiking on this page. 
zachol 02:19, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Warbiking 

message: From techweb.com
A Vancouver, Wash. coffee shop tired of seeing a 20-year-old man mooch off
their free wireless Internet access called the police, who charged him with
"theft of services."
Brewed Awakenings employees dialed 911 after Alexander Eric Smith of Battle
Ground, Wash. piggybacked off the shop's wireless Internet service for more
than three months.
"He doesn't buy anything," Emily Pranger, the shop's manager, told KATU, a
Portland, Ore. television station. "It's not right for him to come and use
it."
Smith allegedly parked his truck in the parking lot to use Brewed
Awakenings' wireless access.
County deputies charged Smith with theft of services after returning to the
parking lot after they told him to stop. The crime, which covers such crimes
as bypassing a utility meter, stealing cable, and leaving a restaurant
without paying, has been used in the past to prosecute hackers who have
accessed a computer or network without paying for it.
::Not sure this is a good place to add another related case, but it's a funny one and doesn't seem to fit anywhere in the Article as it appears now. The current Wikipedia article is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Wakashio_oil_spill focusing on the relatively minor environmental disaster, but I think the REAL story was that the captain was wardriving his ship when he wrecked it. Multiple reports say it was a birthday party run amok. All the captain wanted was a Wi-Fi signal to help a member of his crew celebrate his birthday. None of the reports gave details, but the obvious candidate explanation would have been for a video chat with his family. So that's where it becomes a morality play about corporate greed and the Mitsui decision to save costs by not providing Internet access for the crew. But as it applies to this article, ships weren't mentioned. Also it doesn't say much about why "war" is part of the definition. I'm guessing it's because the results can look like battle maps rather than attacking the Wi-Fi hubs in some way. (Not sure I should have touched the name of the section to make it broader, but I basically don't like adding sections unless there's no fit at all.) Shanen (talk) 19:41, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: P.S. When I tried to publish it, Wikipedia told me that there was some kind of edit conflict? I thought I was going to have to do it again, but now I think it was some kind of bug in the update process and there was no actual conflict. At least I can't see any problem here. Shanen (talk) 19:45, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Related cases 

message: Is there really a need to have the whole WT Act in there? Or the original analysis? If there's some other place on the web that can be referenced, it'd be good to just link to said reference. I was tempted to trim down the Act to an excerpt, but IANAL.--Goldfndr 09:55, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  UK WT Act 

message: === Split? ===
Should this be split into Wardriving and Piggybacking (Wi-Fi)? — Omegatron 13:47, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If you're up for writing a main article on Piggybacking and moving content then I say go for it, as a lot of the content in this article is specific to Piggybacking instead of Wardriving.--Goldfndr 01:41, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wardriving or piggybacking? 

message: Should this be split into Wardriving and Piggybacking (Wi-Fi)? — Omegatron 13:47, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If you're up for writing a main article on Piggybacking and moving content then I say go for it, as a lot of the content in this article is specific to Piggybacking instead of Wardriving.--Goldfndr 01:41, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Split? 

message: This article doesn't clarify whether there is a distinction between "wardriving" and/or "piggybacking" vs. attempting to find or use free hotspots, or how that distinction would be drawn.  There are municipal wi-fi networks, free community networks, official free hotspots, and even non-publicized "unofficial hotspots" used to draw business.  Common sense suggests there is a difference between driving around a business district looking for a place to stop and check your e-mail vs. lurking in a residential side street sniffing traffic between two computers in a private home, but can you generalize and codify this to cover more ambiguous situations? Does the existing terminology recognize such a distinction? Mike Serfas 05:48, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wardriving vs. hunting for free hotspots 

message: Is this for the Uk or US? Its not clear in the article. Think outside the box 09:58, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Wireless Telegraphy Act

message: I have (re-re-re-re-re) posted an external link to WiFiMaps.com in the maps of wardriving section, which seems to be considered spam. This is not spam -- wifimaps is a web-based map of wardriving data, and should be listed in the section about wardriving maps. Drew from Zhrodague 20:05, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It is spam because you are attempting to promote your own website.  This is not allowed by Wikipedia rules.  I have removed all improper external links.   Jehochman (talk/contrib) 06:40, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Links considered spam 

message: Suggest changing the piggybacking link to "Piggybacking (internet access)", since the current link points to just piggybacking.
Lars 83.226.99.183 21:22, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  change of piggybacking link 

message: The sentence:
Wardriving is illegal in the United Kingdom through several pieces of legislation, as evidenced by several arrests[1] and one conviction[2].
should be changed; it implies Wardriving is illegal in the UK through the legislation is quotes, and the cases it links to. Those cases all illustrate conviction for piggybacking, not wardriving, for which there has been no UK conviction. Indeed, all the legislation quoted refers to illegally accessing data or programs, or intercepting communciations, neither of which is relevant to Wardriving (understood to mean detecting networks, not breaking into them).
I'm sure that piggybacking is as illegal in the US, and elsewhere, as in the UK. 163.1.215.180 15:32, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Evidence, please. 66.53.222.254 (talk) 09:21, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

text: Yet our WarViewing article says "As the video signals are broadcast in a license free ISM band, it is not illegal in the UK to receive them even if they are not intended for you." — Omegatron 16:10, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Illegal in UK 

message: I have deleted a sentence from the initial paragraph of the article. The comparisons to amateur radio, DXing, and radio scanning are misleading and not really accurate as comparisons. Most basically, wardriving is "surfing" in a primparily geographic way, whereas all these comparisons usually involve only the radio spectrum. More specifically, with regard to DXing, people are expecting (usually even hoping) that their signals will be heard and recognized—not always the case with wifi providers. Radio scanners are slightly more like what's being described here (because they share moral/ethical questionability), but the link is still tenuous at best in the context of an encyclopedic introduction to wardriving. Most basically, this provides very little enhanced understanding of the article's topic to people who DO know what ham radio or scanners do, and absolutely none to those who don't. /Ninly (talk) 01:52, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cuts to intro paragraph 

message: Is it just me or does it sound like Nintendo is promoting war driving with their new handheld system the 3DS.
"The other thing that we're trying to do with the Nintendo 3DS is that even for people who don't have wireless access in their home, our goal is that by carrying the device around with them they'll be able to connect to wireless networks elsewhere. And without even realizing it, they'll notice some kind of change in their game data, or a download containing new information. I think that that kind of surprise element is something that will have a very Nintendo feel to it." - Miyamoto
The referance is http://wii.ign.com/articles/110/1100039p1.html
Rob mc 1 (talk) 05:00, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nintendo Promoting War Driving 

message: Reference 7, http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=189600767, appears to be broken. --Mortense (talk) 10:01, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Broken reference 

message: https://location.services.mozilla.com/ and the Android App MozStumbler.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.19.250.22 (talk) 19:35, 17 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  See Also 

message: As someone unfamiliar with the topic, I think this article should be more clear on what is the purpose of wardriving on the lede, as the article dives into explaining variations of wardriving before even clarifying what wardriving is used for. Finding vulnerable networks and hacking? Getting free wi-fi? Building a database? If there are multiple reasons, list them briefly. 2804:7F0:3885:87A2:D874:A715:F7CB:2CAB (talk) 17:49, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confusing lede