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Getting free internet on a cruise, saving $170

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Re: Getting free internet on a cruise, saving $170

#21

Post by ryandrake »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #13
jasonjayr wrote: post #9

I imagine one of the ships officers will be tipped off by the IT team about the unusual number of free-internet activation attached to your booking id, and either give your room a visit to knock it off, or just bill some multiple of the $170 anyway. It sounds like it should only be used only a few times per booking, and this is going to hit at least 4/hour for multiple hours a day, so it will stick out like a sore th…

> imagine one of the ships officers will be tipped off by the IT team If it’s any of the major cruise lines there almost certainly isn’t anyone in IT paying that much attention.

Yea, I'd think something like onboard Internet is something set up once for the ship, and then basically forgotten about as long as the overall revenue is above some "reasonable" threshold given the number of passengers. Ain't no security team sitting there monitoring user registration metrics in real-time looking for fraud. At best, they might pull logs every quarter to look for vulnerabilities like this to close.

Re: Getting free internet on a cruise, saving $170

#22

Post by asadm »

dale_huevo wrote: post #12

One of the fringe benefits of going on a cruise is that you can disconnect from the Internet for a week. Hit up the bar, make love to your wife, gamble a bit. All without your phone constantly buzzing in your pocket. If you go on a cruise to immediately open your laptop it seems like a waste of time and money.

Unless you LOVE your work and just want a change of scene while doing what you love.

Re: Getting free internet on a cruise, saving $170

#23

Post by Scarblac »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #15
nopelynopington wrote: post #2

[flagged]

> This is .1% problems Cruises are a stereotypically mass-market vacation. In most cases they’re cheaper than a hotel.

But still, Google says there's about 30 million cruise passengers per year, or less than 0.4% of the world. Close.

Re: Getting free internet on a cruise, saving $170

#25

Post by isawczuk »

jasoncartwright wrote: post #11
isawczuk wrote: post #8

I was watching some cruise crew videos, and it turns out their biggest expense is internet. I'm curious why they don’t just install Starlink to cut costs and maybe sell to guests some "piracy" internet?

Pirate seaborne internet has been tried. "A Navy officer is demoted after sneaking a satellite dish onto a warship to get the internet" https://apnews.com/article/navy-illegal-wireless-internet-53... https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2024/09/03/how-navy...

Maybe military is not best place to have "piracy internet", yet I think with current tech - internet access should not be an issue.

Re: Getting free internet on a cruise, saving $170

#26

Post by whizzzkid »

I was able to do something similar on the Celebrity Cruises, however, theirs is more vulnerable as you can overtake a logged-in user's session by changing to their IP addresses. This allows you to take over room-controls, casting and internet in Celebrity's connected rooms.

I didn't try this on Princes, because I had an all-inclusive pricing, but yeah, this is possible.

Re: Getting free internet on a cruise, saving $170

#27

Post by bryanlarsen »

jotux wrote: post #14
isawczuk wrote: post #8

I was watching some cruise crew videos, and it turns out their biggest expense is internet. I'm curious why they don’t just install Starlink to cut costs and maybe sell to guests some "piracy" internet?

Went on a cruise last summer, the internet on board was starlink. It was advertised at $30/day.

It's interesting to contrast Starlink on airlines vs Starlink on cruises.

AFAICT, all the airlines rolling out Starlink have made it free on their flights. Which implies cooperation from Starlink -- either Starlink has made "free" a condition of their service, or they've just priced it cheap enough to make free a reasonable option for airlines.

There's no good reason why Starlink for cruise ships should be priced significantly higher than on airlines. So either the cruise lines or Starlink are gouging. Or both. Probably both.

Re: Getting free internet on a cruise, saving $170

#28

Post by Doohickey-d »

This is actually quite common: I've been on ferries, at airports, even hotels, which give you some amount of time for free, often anonymously. So just a mac address change gives extra internet.

New Android versions make it especially convenient, with a "Wi-Fi non-persistent MAC randomization" option in the developer options, meaning you can just "forget" the wifi network and connect again with a fresh mac address.

In some cases I've seen networks that allow any traffic on port 53 - it doesn't have to be DNS traffic. The most surprising one was a mobile network with a pay as you go payment model: load money first, buy a data package, when the data package runs out, you get a captive portal that says "you've run out of data" - but port 53 wasn't blocked, so a commercial VPN resulted in unlimited internet at unlimited speed, with roaming anywhere in the world (and that was back in the day before SIM card registration was required too, so anonymous, too).

Re: Getting free internet on a cruise, saving $170

#29

Post by amendegree »

_gtuv wrote: post #16
bowmessage wrote: post #5

OP, great work, bypassing internet restrictions is always fun. Though, I hope your family isn't cruising much in the future-- sharing stuff like this, with so many specifics about which cruise line and exact retry methodologies used, is a surefire way to get it shut down. (Or worse, a nasty internet bill from the cruise line.)

Thanks! My thought process was that realistically, a negligible amount of people will even attempt this. Also, there will always be a way to bypass internet restrictions. I will say, it would be kind of cool if this post gets big enough that someone from the cruise line sees it and actually feels that they need to put in the time to patch it.

You’re on the front page of hn… while they may not see it right away it’s possible some bored tech blogger picks up the story

Re: Getting free internet on a cruise, saving $170

#30

Post by whizzzkid »

chillers wrote: post #24

On Royal Caribbean, it's much simpler. You can open a hotspot and allow other devices to connect. We paid for one device, and friends and family could connect whenever they were nearby. At one point, we had up to 8 connected devices with no issues.

This doesn't really work with iOS devices. You need to have an android or better a travel router.
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