To think friend was being a bit tight over internet password

[CadgingCarol]

Name changed as I'm an over sharer.
Anyway I had some issues with paying my internet account recently basically direct debit hadn't come out and I'd been cut off long story!

I was stuck at home on my own with the kids, my older dc was going on and on and on about internet being cut off stress. I thought I'll ring up and pay to get it back on etc but realised I couldn't transfer the money as no internet! My phone internet wouldn't work either.
I thought shit, I messaged my friend who lives close and I'm a round about way asked her if I could borrow her internet password to get things sorted,
Her reply was "sorry I don't want to give it out" now we've been friends for over 4 years have each other kids do stuff etc etc so I was quite shocked at her response. It's basically saying she doesn't trust me isn't it?
Yes the internet being back on wasn't urgent but I still needed it back on ASAP. I wouldn't have given a second thought to giving a "friend" the password so aibu to think she isn't really a friend as she didn't help me out when I was in the shit?

You have no idea what sort of plan her friend is on. A lot of people still have a data limit and even people with an uncapped allowance will have acceptable usage limits in their contract which if breached could see them put on restrictions. Besides, there's bandwidth and latency to consider as well and as they appear to live in a rural area (no 3g) that is very much a possible issue.

Sorry no - her friend wanted to use it to pay her own bill. A 5 minute tap into her wifi isn't going to up her bill. She WBU

I moved house recently too. My new NDNs told me all the best cafes for free internet access nearby and the local church had this facility. I had never met my NDNs before and didn’t expect to have their code though wouldn’t have said no to it.

I do sympathise OP, i hadn’t realised how much I relied on the internet until moving and all the things i needed to sort out which were easier done via websites. I fund BT have good free wifi incidently and managed for nearly three weeks using it.

Found not fund!

Meh. Nearly everyone who comes in my house asks for my wifi password and gets it. Its just the one that came with the router so its not used anywhere else or anything. The health visitor asked for it once!

Personally I think YANBU. As a friend I would give out my password for Wifi, but nothing else. If I was concerned I'd just change it a couple of days later.

If someone have the same WiFi password as their private emails / accounts / anything else then you deserve every thing you get!

As a mate I would probably.

But same thing happened to me with a neighbor friend. They'd had a rough month, asked if they could just borrow mine for a short period. 3 months later he was getting loads of Amazon deliveries and my bandwidth was shite. Changing the password again sorted that.

Just sayin...

Maybe asking to use your neighbours phone would have been less personal?

You might want to think about changing your provider and bank, if they don't inform you bill/direct debt hasn't been paid.

My provider, I would recieve emails and phone calls telling me my internet service would be suspended in x amount of days if bill isn't paid. Then they would stop internet, but leave phone line if bill still wasn't paid. Eventually cut phone off too, if still not paid.

I thought reducing services was the norm.

My bank would also email/write to me telling me DD had not been paid and what the charge was. Again I thought that was the norm.

Its 50/50, Half of my mates if they lived next door and asked if they could borrow my internet for a day to sort stuff out i'd say yes too. The other half of my mates I wouldn't trust as they'd likely never get their own internet if I did. Hell I wouldnt even trust my own sister for that reason.

Sorry no - her friend wanted to use it to pay her own bill. A 5 minute tap into her wifi isn't going to up her bill. She WBU

RTFT.

C8H10N4O2

I appreciate your explanation on how things are in UK.

I do however, still disagree with you on this completely disagree that internet connectivity is a luxury

Yes, it is how banks, big corporations etc function, but not everyone here has the luxury of using this option. I see in a recent statistic that in South Africa (and we are way ahead in terms of technology that many African countries) that 59% of South Africans now have internet accessibility. But this includes, use of internet cafes, libraries, at work etc, so not that each person has this available in their homes. I will use myself for an example. Until last year, I ran my home based business on a 3g network only, with a 10GB limit, for a month. For this I paid around 17 pounds per month. In my area, we have no telephone cables, no fibre and no other option but 3g/4g connection. I now have a great big satellite dish on my roof, as now I have wireless with this set up which cost me 400 pounds, and then the monthly fee of around 30 pounds. It is a 2mg line, unlimited, but throttled down to 1mg when we reach 50GB. I am fortunate, as yes my dc need to do research for school, they have Wi-Fi for whatsapping etc. But my daughters friend, has no internet at home. Its just too expensive. She goes to the library, which luckily for her is in walking distance, but she cannot print from the library. So she screen shots everything and then writes it all out when she gets home. My dd just prints them and pastes them in her book. She realizes that she is at an advantage for being able to do this.

Our state schooling system introduced an online enrolment system last year, where previously you stood in a line with your form(sometimes from the night before to ensure a place). That was great news for some, but for others it was a disaster. They couldn't get their child a school place as they didn't have the facility to do it. This didn't stop the queues outside the schools as planned. As the parents with no access still had to queue at the school so that the school could register them on their behalf. The queue was much longer, as it takes a lot longer than just handing a form in, which was already completed at home.

This is just one example. Yes, I will agree with you that the big corporations have amazing options for us to do things immediately, its safer, and we are quite advanced tech wise in those aspects. But the sad part is, is that not everyone is fortunate enough to use what is available to them. It doesn't come cheap, or free sadly.

Plus it's always good practice to change passwords etc from the default setting.

I don't think this is worth worrying about for routers that come with customised passwords. In fact it would probably do more harm than good, given that the ISP-generated passwords are likely to be better. This rule is more relevant when everyone gets the same default password.

HerOtherHalf

RTFT.

I have I was replying to someone else. OP specifically said I sorted it that night by ringing someone to log onto my online banking and transfer the money from my other account..which wasn't my first option as it took ages!.. - so it would have been log onto wifi, for a minimal time to resolve wishes there was a zip it emoji on here

@MySweetAudrina

Every child on the street has our password it's the first thing anyone who visits asks for. It's just a big line of alpha numeric characters that are stuck to the fridge and the internet box.

Hmmmmmm.....What could POSSIBLY go wrong with the whole neighbourhood having your internet password?

Bet you leave your back door unlocked and the keys in the car too huh? Because it's such a friendly neighbourhood and everyone is so honest!

And if someone doesn't want to share PINs and passwords and internet banking details, they're a 'bad friend?! and are mean and tight and unreasonable! And what's wrong with giving your date of birth and National insurance number and bank details to the nice man on the phone who says he is from the DWP? I mean, he needs all that to give you that £730 refund you are owed.

The level of sheer foolishness and arrogance from some on this thread is actually horrifying. I think some people are terrifyingly detached from reality. How the hell do they get through life? Serious question.

Upshot is, as many (sensible) people have said, why would anyone want to share their internet password with someone like the OP, who shares internet banking details, and debit card PINs? I wouldn't share a fucking doughnut with her!

If someone have the same WiFi password as their private emails / accounts / anything else then you deserve every thing you get!

Quite

Well Murphys, in the UK internet is pretty much a necessity. If you need unemployment benefit for instance, you have to apply online, and do your jobsearching using Universal Jobmatch, so they can see what you've applied for.

That's just one example.

Back to the thread, I'm staggered at the amount of naivete on here about internet security, as well as the lack of knowledge about capped/limited internet, and rural accessibility.

Also, as others have pointed out, you may trust your friend/family to access your bank account on their computer, but their connection may not be very secure.
My husband is often having to sort out issues on his mum and aunts devices, because they've opened a file emailed to them by a friend's account that has been hacked. He even once had to go and rescue his aunt while she was on the phone to "Microsoft", doing everything the nice man told her to do, because he'd seen that she had a virus!

It's unusual to have capped wifi. I don't understand why some posters are pretending it's not.

Question- what can the kids on my street do with my wifi password? What can they access? I'd be interested to know

Bubble not much really unless they're all highly trained in computer forensics

OK. Do we shave a definitive answer? What damage can you suffer if you give a friend your wifi password so long as that password is unique to your wifi?

Question- what can the kids on my street do with my wifi password? What can they access? I'd be interested to know

Me too.

BertrandRussell I think (but im no expect) that potentially once you're signed into someones else internet you can gain access to their computer network. Giving you a chance to steal passwords, emails, documents, install spyware etc. But you'd have to some computer skills.
Worse thing I can think that the average person could do is look at illegal stuff over your internet. Could lead to you being investigated because as far as the police know its your internet connection so its you looking at the illegal stuff.
As other people say there does tend to be some sort of fair use clause in most internet contracts. This doesnt mean if you use too much data the internet just stops, They just tend to slow your internet down, so you data use doesnt affect your neighbors etc.

So basically it's just Mumsner mean spirited why should I do anything for anyone else if there's nothing in it for me? So bloody depressing.

Every child on the street has our password it's the first thing anyone who visits asks for. It's just a big line of alpha numeric characters that are stuck to the fridge and the internet box.

How can anyone be so lax with their security? How?! This thread is eye opening. Suddenly becomes clear why there's so many scams going around, as it must be SO easy to scam some people!

murphys

Yes definitely there are parts of the world where access is still difficult - satellite access in particular is expensive, narrow and poor latency usually. The move for more sparsely populated areas in Europe has been rapid expansion of high quality 4g at relatively low costs but more densely populated areas have broadband as standard.

However in the UK (and most of Europe) its been standard for enough years that the government classifies it as an essential utility (for cost of living calculations) and therefore has shifted many essential services to be accessible only by internet.

If you are poor or rural or both here the you have a greater dependency on reliable access for basics (or face expensive trips on very limited public transport to these mythical libraries - which themselves are being closed rapidly due to cuts).

It is absolutely the norm in such places to help each other out in exactly the same way I'd share a phone line or use of other essential services.

This is a change which has happened mostly over the last decade - it costs money now not to be able to do stuff online. We already have a utility model which penalises the poor by putting them on the high tarrifs, I think its a poor show when we can't help out our friends and neighbours with use of a utility. In particular I find it amazing that someone would trust their children to a person but not some wifi access!

How can anyone be so lax with their security? How?!

Because so far no one has stated what can go wrong, other than they maybe download something they shouldn't have (so what? easily sorted if police coming knocking and highly unlikely anyway).

Someone else has said that they can steal your documents, but I don't see how? Maybe if someone could talk me through how this would happen then I might understand why people are so reluctant to share. Because at the moment it just looks like meanness to me.

AIBU to tell you all if you have not changed the admin password on your router then every single one of you can be hacked in two mins regardless of your Wi-Fi password