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Save money on wifi using user agent switching

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Re: Save money on wifi using user agent switching

#31

Post by function_seven »

luca-giovanni wrote: post #11
Fizzer wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He knowingly manipulated their device detection system. Yes, it's true their device detection system is trivial to manipulate, but that doesn't change the legality. If a bank forgets to lock their vault, you still wouldn't want to clean them out and admit to it on your blog.

What if you just choose to change your user agent to something different because you prefer the experience? If you then get different offers as a result you can't be held liable.

In that case, you're right. Fraud requires knowledge and intent. This guy, knowing that changing the UA would result in lower fees, did just that. He also (presumably) knew the reason for the different price points--that mobile users are likely to use less data than laptop users* .

On the other hand, if he had simply forgotten to change his UA back to the default (say, after doing some development work), then he couldn't possibly know that he was benefiting from the lower price, and it wouldn't be fraud at that point.

Personally, I have no problem with breaking trivial locks on otherwise non-sensitive networks. The word "fraud" usually conjures up much more serious crime.

* This is very quickly becoming a false assumption I think. Between listening to music from remote servers and watching video on my phone, I think mobile data use, especially in a vacation situation, is fast approaching that of "traditional" data use.

Re: Save money on wifi using user agent switching

#33

Post by lamby »

drostie wrote: post #25

I was staying with my brothers at a hotel in Amsterdam and I had brought my laptop; the hotel offered free unencrypted WiFi for guests. Since it's in a big city, as you might imagine, you don't want the neighbors stealing all of your bandwidth, so even though it was free for us, there was a sign-in page -- you had to go downstairs and request that the desk official give you a token, then use that token to register wi…

> [I] suddenly had no more root permissions. In about half an hour I had downloaded a live CD and burned it and broken into my own box with chroot magic to usurp root permissions to re-add myself to that group

Except the difference here is that there is nothing to "break into" as there is no pretense at security..

Re: Save money on wifi using user agent switching

#34

Post by onli »

belphanior wrote: post #26
CWIZO wrote: post #12

I'm looking forward to the day when I stay in a 100$/night hotel and I don't have to pay for my fricking internet. Every motel/hostel has it for free as it should. To me charging for internet (in hotels/resturatns) in 2012 is the same as charging for using the shower or lights.

Let me tell you a story. A friend of a friend runs an independent midsize hotel here in Germany. They used to offer free internet access. Then one of their guests used the connection to download copyrighted stuff. In due course a nasty letter from a lawyer arrived, demanding payment of around 1000€ and as fighting and losing would have been much more expensive, they payed. They were unable to recover the money, becau…

>They were unable to recover the money, because there was no way to prove which of their guests at that time was responsible.

That's exactly why in all likelihood, they would've won. It's the perfect setup and - in germany - an argument for securing the wlan not better than the default-setting suggests. I am always surprised by the "there is a chance we might loose and pay more, so we will pay"-attitude that seems to be common in such cases.

Re: Save money on wifi using user agent switching

#36

Post by dfc »

luca-giovanni wrote: post #29
dfc wrote: post #19

Ugh, a bit.ly link? Can someone change the URL to point to the actual address of the page? http://viktorpetersson.com/2011/09/25/how-to-get-50-discount... I love that people get up in arms about the change to google's privacy policy but have no trouble funneling traffic through bit.ly and other link shorteners...

I guess it gives the original sharer some feedback on the link otherwise they would never really know what interest it got? Looking at traffic I think the link was picked up off Twitter originally hence the URL shortener too.

The original sharer is not sigma cloud (the bitly link creator).[1] Ostensibly the OP actually visited the site before posting it on HN so its not like the OP was only aware of the shortened link.

What's more important a consistent approach to privacy or "knowing how much interest someone's HN link received"?

[1] Conspiracy theory: jcloud is an astro-turfing account for sigma cloud. The jcloud account was created 377 days ago the same day a sigma cloud story was posted. Jcloud's first post was on the sigmacloud story and was complimentary of sigma cloud:

    "Just discovered these guys. Nice interface actually.
    Investigating a bit more but so far so good."
Of the three stories jcloud posted two were shortened with sg.cd and the third was a sigma cloud press release.

Re: Save money on wifi using user agent switching

#37

Post by luca-giovanni »

dfc wrote: post #36
luca-giovanni wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it gives the original sharer some feedback on the link otherwise they would never really know what interest it got? Looking at traffic I think the link was picked up off Twitter originally hence the URL shortener too.

The original sharer is not sigma cloud (the bitly link creator).[1] Ostensibly the OP actually visited the site before posting it on HN so its not like the OP was only aware of the shortened link. What's more important a consistent approach to privacy or "knowing how much interest someone's HN link received"? [1] Conspiracy theory: jcloud is an astro-turfing account for sigma cloud. The jcloud account was created 377…

My point was that the first hit on the article is on Twitter and was from CloudSigma. So I'm guessing the URL was copy pasted from there. Looking at jclouds account, submissions do generally come from CloudSigma tweets but it seems to relate generally to wider things not that company. The residual value of a URL shortening isn't clear to do to the lengths you suggest. Your post gives more advertising than the submissions thus far ;-) The three submissions made by jclouds-fan seem to be of a high quality. The first relating to the same blog as this latest one so looks like a user with a narrow interest base!

Re: Save money on wifi using user agent switching

#38

Post by asmithmd1 »

Tichy wrote: post #14

wouldn't it be cheaper to get a mobile router and a mobile flatrate for the country? Where I live 15€ would buy 1gb for a month. I have wondered about easily obtaining prepaid cards for travel, might be a business opportunity if there is no good solution yet?

I have used this guy for pre-paid SIM cards:

http://mrsimcard.com/

He is basically a one man shop owner but is very knowledgable and reliable.

Re: Save money on wifi using user agent switching

#39

Post by rwmj »

cstross wrote: post #27
Tichy wrote: post #14

wouldn't it be cheaper to get a mobile router and a mobile flatrate for the country? Where I live 15€ would buy 1gb for a month. I have wondered about easily obtaining prepaid cards for travel, might be a business opportunity if there is no good solution yet?

If you know of any source of such SIM cards, please post it here! I've seen plenty of international-travel SIM cards that give cheap[er] texts and voice calls, but none that include any data. And trying to set up a pre-pay data SIM from a foreign ISP in a language you don't speak/read is a nightmare ...

I found this wiki(a) site useful:

http://prepaidwithdata.wikia.com/wiki/Prepaid_SIM_with_data

Re: Save money on wifi using user agent switching

#40

Post by luca-giovanni »

rmc wrote: post #20
CWIZO wrote: post #12

I'm looking forward to the day when I stay in a 100$/night hotel and I don't have to pay for my fricking internet. Every motel/hostel has it for free as it should. To me charging for internet (in hotels/resturatns) in 2012 is the same as charging for using the shower or lights.

It's always interesting how the really cheap accomodation (hostels etc.) have free internet, but the expensive accomodation have expensive internet. It's a great example of price being based on what the market can bear. People who stay in cheap hostels will just go without internet, or stay at another hostel that has free internet. People who stay in fancy hotels don't care about €15 (or the company is paying)

Sadly you are so right! Internet nowadays is a utility though so I do think it is rude making people pay for it.
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