Synthead@lemmy.world kindly commented that wifi network names of you and your neighbour can be used to locate your address, so please be aware to avoid betraying your privacy. Peace!

  • swordsmanluke@programming.dev
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    1 year ago

    Back in the day, if you joined an adhoc mesh network - ever - then Win XP would broadcast that network SSID anytime you weren’t connected to anything else.

    So once, someone somewhere created an ad hoc network named “Free Public Wi-Fi” and people being people, someone else connected to it. After that, every time their laptop had no other viable connection, their machine would offer “Free Public Wi-Fi”… and the machine of anyone else who connected would behave the same way.

    Sorry, that’s more than fifty words.

    Tl;Dr: it was an accidental virus that took advantage of a bug in human psychology. And Windows XP. Eventually, XP was patched.