The door bell rang earlier – I answered it to one of the lesser seen neighbours carrying a laptop.
“Hello, I’m Brian from number 18, I wondered if you could do me a favour, Tony says you are good with computers.”
“Hello, Er, Ok. What’s the problem?”
Brian had been using someone else’s WiFi connection and now he couldn’t connect. He’d been told by someone else that the WiFi owner had probably changed the key and he needed to use WEPcrack to get the new key. He didn’t have a clue how to use it, could I help?
I suggested that maybe the key had been changed to keep him out?
“Nah, nah mate, he said I can use it.”
I take a look at the laptop screen and see that the SSID of the access point he is trying to crack is 8bob. This being my WiFi connection. I asked him how long it had been since he was unable to use the WiFi?
“About 3 weeks now”
“Yeah, that’s about right – that’s when I fixed it to stop others using it. Don’t think I can help you really. See you later.”
I upgraded from WEP to WPA about three weeks ago when I noticed the odd connection I couldn’t account for.
“Oh, um, right. oh. er. fookin’ hell. So you can’t help then?”
“No, not really. Can’t help you.”
I think he missed the bit where I said I’d changed it to stop it being used…
He left.
Ha ha. Superb. You should have restored access and wiped chunks off his machine at your leisure…
Fantastic!
Don’t you just hate how people contact you though, just as you know more than them, and they expect you to spend hours helping them whilst they laugh and say ‘oh I tried that earlier and it didn’t give me access’ and that sort of rubbish? I get that quite a lot from someone at the moment and I swear if she wasn’t pretty I’d make her ‘accidentally’ break something for wasting my time.
Mxx
Quink: I’ve been tempted – I probably would had I not surmised I’d only end up being asked to fix it anyway.
Murphyz: Yep, I know and loath that situation.
“You have called me to fix a probelm you just admitted you had no clue about, don’t stand behind me and tell me that what I’m doing will not work.”
Those that don’t read messages on the screen annoy me too, but that is a rant for elsewhere I think…
Or even better, charge the hell out of him and resell your connection. That way you can pay your internet bill with his money and give him like half of the bandwidth. There’s money to be made.