Thanks for that information - will try to watch it.

Interesting though that there has only been one "solid" response to my questions.

In reply to a post by eckiedoo:

Thanks for that information - will try to watch it.

Interesting though that there has only been one "solid" response to my questions.

Surely that answers your question? You asked if we had any knowledge of it and you have had answers - essentially no. Is only a positive response of "yes, it happens a lot" an acceptable response?

Reasonable question - but I am trying to get some idea of how many cases of absolute proof have occurred, rather than the generalised ""yes, it happens a lot".

We have read of it happening a lot - but as you have observed, only one, solitary instance and by that individual.

So do we have reasonable, personal proof that it happens a lot?

At present one response seems very low on a forum such as this, given the general talk and rumours of its occurrence,

The sample population on here is going to be heavily skewed to those who know more about how to protect their wi-fi against hacking. But if you ask the wider population a lot of them will have not a scooby if they have been hacked or not so you are still no further forward in getting an accurate idea of how prevalent it is.

I probably would not notice if someone connected to my home network wifi for a short time.
Anyone doing this would need to be close, and if outside would likely be visible. A technically competent neighbour might manage but the benefit to them might not be that great particularly as they might have their own broadband anyway. A business network might be more interesting.

As far as crime is concerned I do get regular phishing emails.

In reply to a post by eckiedoo:

Thanks.

Is the railway line on an embankment, viaduct or some other raised position?

Interesting, thinking that the trains themselves are almost enclosed metal tubes.

Not significantly, and not visible from my house.

https://imgur.com/a/bkzjQ

That has a map, the streetview in that direction, and the known APs in last 24 hours from my Unifi controller.

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

I probably would not notice if someone connected to my home network wifi for a short time.
Anyone doing this would need to be close, and if outside would likely be visible. A technically competent neighbour might manage but the benefit to them might not be that great particularly as they might have their own broadband anyway. A business network might be more interesting.

As far as crime is concerned I do get regular phishing emails.

That's exactly it. I have no interest in cracking my neighbours wifi in a usual circumstance as it's almost certainly not as good as mine anyway. At best it's the same (if they have opted for 350m) and even then I'll probably struggle to hit those speeds over Wifi rather than cable.

I would do it in the event of some sort of outage, assuming only my house was affected, but I wouldn't do any harm, and wouldn't saturate the connection - then they might notice and boot me off.

To be honest, if a neighbour got into mine I would likely notice eventually because of the Unifi controller which gives me lots of data, but I wouldn't really care. If a neighbour had issues with their internet I'd happily let them use mine.

I actually have a guest network set up with a payment portal on the off chance anyone wants to give me money, but nobody ever has!

Agreed fully about the skewing and its likely effects - it is also, hopefully, that skewed population that is more likely to make either a PROVEN detection; or have sufficient knowledge, experience etc, to have strong grounds for suspecting that it may be happening.

I agree that we are very unlikely to get a conventionally "accurate" idea of its orevalence; but so far in this skewed population, it seems to be extremely rare, compared with the publicity given to the possibilities, rather than the probabilities.

If it was happening a lot and the "victims" were aware then it would almost certainly be all over the press. The absence of lots of press articles about actual wifi hacks means either it isn't happening or people don't realise - either way the answer to the "proven wifi hacking" is going to be a no.

There is a difference between people piggy backing on a poorly secured (or not secured) wifi and targeted hacking of a wifi connection. Generally full hacking is unlikely if someone just wants to borrow a broadband connection for a bit of surfing. Hacking to target a users data (ie bank details, personal data, etc) is more useful but requires a higher level of skill and also is likely to be very targeted - people who realise they have been hacked for this purpose may actually choose not to divulge that information. The easier way is to target Internet services and hack the data from them and sell on the dark web - that is news we do hear very regularly.

And I suspect a lot of the supposed hack stories that do make the red top rags are not technical hacks at all but trusting users being conned into handing over login and other details by smooth-talkers.