Save money on wifi using user agent switching • Hacker News Board

Re: Save money on wifi using user agent switching

#81

Post by TylerE » Sat, Mar 03, 2012, 6:39 PM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #77

Gravityloss wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably. It's interesting to think when a hack becomes a fraud or stealing.

When they get your identifying information and feel like hassling you. The only immoral thing here is the wifi provider increasing the complexity of the transaction to extract as much money as possible. Should one be required to tell the supermarket their net worth so they can be charged "appropriately" for their food? Anonymity is the basis for a shared existence. Two parties whose sole interaction consists of sendi…

I find it a bit amusing that someone on this site, where so much of the content is about optimization and business models, is acting so morally offended by the concept of price differentiation.

Re: Save money on wifi using user agent switching

#82

Post by mindslight » Sat, Mar 03, 2012, 6:54 PM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #81

mindslight wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When they get your identifying information and feel like hassling you. The only immoral thing here is the wifi provider increasing the complexity of the transaction to extract as much money as possible. Should one be required to tell the supermarket their net worth so they can be charged "appropriately" for their food? Anonymity is the basis for a shared existence. Two parties whose sole interaction consists of sendi…

I find it a bit amusing that someone on this site, where so much of the content is about optimization and business models, is acting so morally offended by the concept of price differentiation.

So many of the articles are about business model optimization because it's not the primary nature of hackers - they need to be reminded. The major difference is that the businesses here are new and the market and product are uncertain (inherently complex); Internet access, by definition, is a solved commodity.

Re: Save money on wifi using user agent switching

#83

Post by apaprocki » Sat, Mar 03, 2012, 7:07 PM UTC

Airlines which offer wi-fi connections usually offer a cheaper rate when signing in with a phone-based browser user-agent as well.

Re: Save money on wifi using user agent switching

#84

Post by TylerE » Sat, Mar 03, 2012, 7:08 PM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #82

TylerE wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it a bit amusing that someone on this site, where so much of the content is about optimization and business models, is acting so morally offended by the concept of price differentiation.

So many of the articles are about business model optimization because it's not the primary nature of hackers - they need to be reminded. The major difference is that the businesses here are new and the market and product are uncertain (inherently complex); Internet access, by definition , is a solved commodity.

Really, it is? How come in 2012, I, who live in decent sized US city (Metro area is about 140k), still pay about $40 for 10Mbit connectivity, barely better than I could get 10 years ago?

Re: Save money on wifi using user agent switching

#85

Post by darklajid » Sat, Mar 03, 2012, 7:17 PM UTC

tripzilch wrote: post #75

darklajid wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run iodine[1] on my server. Maybe it's illegal, maybe it's a grey area - I don't care. Here in Israel free wifi access is the norm, but in DE? They charge an arm and a leg. Switzerland (if we're talking about Swisscom anyway)? They are _insane_. The hotels already rip you off with prices like there's no tomorrow and charge for internet on top. I fire up iodine on my client. If it works: Great. The network was obvio…

> but in DE? They charge an arm and a leg. Strongly depends on where you are, apparently. When I was in Berlin, there was free Internet all over the place. In our hostel, the hotel across the street, just about any coffee bar, pub, sandwich stand, pizzeria ... Sometimes you had to ask for a password, other times you could just connect, and other times you had to catch some air network from the place next door. Or may…

I've to admit my experience in DE is limited to certain ~weird~ places. I _lived_ in CGN and rarely needed wifi outside of my own home. Got no experience w/ Berlin, but I might move there in a year.

My problem in DE was usually related to trips to customers, to the ~end of the world~. In CH it was more prevalent: I stayed in roughly 20 different hotels in Bern so far and most of them, ignoring the decoration from 50 years ago, were charging for internet access. On top of a very high room rate.

Re: Save money on wifi using user agent switching

#86

Post by darklajid » Sat, Mar 03, 2012, 7:20 PM UTC

13rules wrote: post #65

darklajid wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run iodine[1] on my server. Maybe it's illegal, maybe it's a grey area - I don't care. Here in Israel free wifi access is the norm, but in DE? They charge an arm and a leg. Switzerland (if we're talking about Swisscom anyway)? They are _insane_. The hotels already rip you off with prices like there's no tomorrow and charge for internet on top. I fire up iodine on my client. If it works: Great. The network was obvio…

That is really cool — never even thought about the possibility of tunneling over DNS ... now I must try it!

It seems there are projects to improve on iodine. Heyoka [1] seemed interesting for a while, but the authors seem to have abandoned it now. If DNS is not an option: You can tunnel stuff via icmp as well. Still looking for a decent solution (needs to work cross-platform at least for the client) as a fallback if DNS is restricted.

And - enjoy, have fun. Don't spoil the fun for all of us by writing an article in a big newspaper about it. :)

1: http://heyoka.sourceforge.net/

Re: Save money on wifi using user agent switching

#87

Post by mindslight » Sat, Mar 03, 2012, 7:26 PM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #84

mindslight wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many of the articles are about business model optimization because it's not the primary nature of hackers - they need to be reminded. The major difference is that the businesses here are new and the market and product are uncertain (inherently complex); Internet access, by definition , is a solved commodity.

Really, it is? How come in 2012, I, who live in decent sized US city (Metro area is about 140k), still pay about $40 for 10Mbit connectivity, barely better than I could get 10 years ago?

Because utilities tend to plateau when they provide "enough" capacity? The house I'm in has the original water main and electrical service from 1900 and 1940. Being a commodity says nothing of the price (/trend), just the fungibility.

Re: Save money on wifi using user agent switching

#88

Post by jiggy2011 » Sat, Mar 03, 2012, 7:43 PM UTC

lamby wrote: post #33

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..

Very true, if you don't encrypt data (with a strong algorithm + key) then it will always be accessible to anyone with hardware access.

I remember with Windows XP a friend had a failing hard disk that would no longer boot Windows and they asked if I could try and recover some data from it.

I plugged the disk into my tower and booted my own copy of Windows and tried to access the "My Documents" folder of the broken disk from there. It gave me some theatre about not being allowed to access the files there because I didn't have permission.

Then I rebooted my computer into Linux and mounted it with the NTFS drivers and of course all the files were there to be accessed. As an experiment I rebooted to my Windows XP again and logged into my local administrator account, this also let me access the files.

I can't help but feel that some of these measures perhaps give an illusion of security.

I also wonder with say computer forensics whether something like a file timestamp could be used as evidence in court since these could be easily tampered with by someone using a non standard FS driver.

Re: Save money on wifi using user agent switching

#89

Post by jiggy2011 » Sat, Mar 03, 2012, 7:54 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #10

Word to the wise: "circumventing the access restriction was easy to do, Your Honor, so I assumed it was OK" is not something you ever want to have to say. There exist wifi systems where setting a cookie "paid=1" will save you $15. You might think there are no legal consequences for "writing a text file on your own computer." I strongly suggest not testing that.

This is an interesting point and I wonder where the line would be drawn.

As an example I remember years ago when people say fit to create "secure areas" in websites by using a JS username/password prompt which meant that you could easily bypass this by viewing the source.

Now at the point you have done that perhaps you have knowingly done something to bypass the security.

Question is, what happens if you had JS disabled in your browser (or were using a browser that did not support it) which would be something you are clearly within your rights to do and therefor had no idea that such a security mechanicism was in place anyway?

Re: Save money on wifi using user agent switching

#90

Post by jiggy2011 » Sat, Mar 03, 2012, 8:02 PM UTC

I'm surprised there's still much money in selling wifi internet access.

People who want to use their internet on the move are very likely to have a smartphone or at least a dongle and 3G is usually fast enough.

Here in the UK the train services used to provide free wifi to travelers but recently they decided to charge for it and give the option of a free trial.

On my last journey I tried the free trial and found that it was just as slow as it had always been but was now £5 an hour.

I would have been seriously disappointed if I had paid for that service. Luckily I could just use my mobile phone tethering and get nice fast access.

Surely a better model would be to provide access for free but use some DNS redirection of the popular ad services to redirect the ads to ones of your choice and reap the benefits of those clicks.

I also let a lady in the carriage use my connection for a few minutes to check her emails so it's not like you necessarily need your own connection either.