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Public and shared Wifi may be banned


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The sort of open Wifi that you can use in cafée, and the shared Wifi hotspots that Free and Sfr offer could well be banned from January if the ministère de l'Intérieur's  latest proposal is accepted.

I am not clear if the sort offered by some of you to your guests will come under this.

Using Tor may also be banned though it is more difficult to see how that might be achieved.

http://hightech.bfmtv.com/internet/le-gouvernement-francais-veut-bloquer-tor-et-interdire-le-wifi-public-934835.html

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Just about sums up the French Governments attitude to any business trying to entice customers and increase trade. They are a bunch of halfwits, as everybody knows; any 15 year old from Paris or Peckham will run rings around any legislation to hamper internet access.  [:D]

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SIgh. Which will mean that places like Egypt and Morocco, to name but a couple, will have a more evolved attitude to modern technology.

Here in the UK, I'm rarely more than a few steps away from free Wifi. In France, at this rate, it'll be a century.

Coincidentally, son#1 has literally just been telling me that he's in the process of booking a room with Air B&B in Berlin, and every response he's been getting from potential lessors has included a dire warning that, whilst free Wifi will be available, illegal downloading will invoke dire consequences. Maybe Germany just backs up its existing legislation with actual action, as opposed to the halfheartedness of Hadopi or whatever it's called.
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That is good news for me, as fast as I disactivate the Free public network which requires a whole hoop jumping exercise with special one time codes they sneakily re-activate it.

 

I get maybe one week of being able to enter and leave my premises without being blocked and it all starts again, either the access to my driveway or the customers car park is blocked or in some instances they drive right in to get a better signal to connect, the Young mothers are the worst.

 

Even when they cant connect people are always pulling over to connect on their mobile phones, they cannot possibly drive another 100 metres without looking at Fessbook.

 

Whilst they can phyically stop outside and block everybody in or out the whole frontage is zébré and has no parking signs within the diagonals, makes not the slightest bit of difference, I have pretty much solved the  problem of those who park their all day by verbalising them myself having scanned and then printed the official avis de contravention notices that the Gendarmes use

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Certainly on the SFR box, you can activate or deactivate the wifi signal. How the Government with police this is beyond me. Many people use wifi extenders in their houses as, like us, the walls are too thick to allow room to room access.

Then there is the question of Virtual Private Networks that allow people who use them to "fool" the system to watch BBC iPlayer etc.

You don't have to broadcast messages for other to read them, just leave drafts in an emailer and allow "others" to read them.
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What a difference in attitude.

In Luxembourg City there is a public wi-fi facility called Hot City.

Normally you pay for this  (not much) but during the Presidency of the EU it has been made free.

This has been so successful, with an 8 fold increase in usage, that it was announced today that it will remain free when the Presidency ends next year.

More than pays for itself with increased tourism and business.  A refreshing outlook I think.

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The thing is that this is not about switching off WiFi hotspots, it's about knowing who is using them. If I walk around my village of 200 people there are loads of hotspots for SFR, Orange, Free etc. I know how Orange works, you get a screen pop up that askes for your email Orange address and password. Once accepted you can use the Internet etc. I assume the others are the same but they know who you are and of course know your postal address etc because of your Orange billing details. Even at McDonalds you have to create and use a login to get access. They might not know immediately where you live but they can work it out if they need to and of course the time you were there and your browser history which is all logged. Seeing as McDoos has CCTV both inside and out they have a photo to boot and seeing how they have ID cards in France it takes only a few minutes to find where you live etc. With Orange if you don't have an Orange email account you can create a login and pay for either time or bandwidth although it is not cheap. I did try the 'Fon' thing but that really turned out to be a waste of time and nobody used it unless you had it set as an open network.

 

With open networks it is difficult to see how the police etc can monitor usage and track people. Rather like hadopi it will fall by the wayside after a year or two. The funny thing about that was the only people they managed to catch bang to rights turned out to be people working at the Ministry of Culture, the very people who were supposed to be protecting copyright etc.

 

Don't forget they only want to do this when there is a State of Emergency although I suspect in this case the 'emergency' may become permanent.

 

Anyway it has not been passed yet and there is already a big 'anti' lobby it might not happen so I am not that worried. If it does I suspect it will be up to the ISP's to turn the Hotspot function off on their routers remotely and if you want to plug in an open WiFi extender I can't see they will ever know unless they pay you a visit.

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[quote user="NormanH"]Can't we just opt-out? It's so long ago it's a vague memory, but I thought I actually had to either activate or choose to be part of the 'hot-spot' ...
You are probably more up to date though than I am.
[/quote]

 

The default was opt out so I didnt have to do anything, then suddenly I found people queueing up to use my Wi-Fi and dicovered it had been enabled as if by magic, the procedure to then disactivate it involved so much hoop jumping and encrypted one time passwords, having to run to the Freebox and then back to the computer in less than 5 seconds to enter a code etc etc it was clear they didnt want it switched off, I did so and then by magic again it re-instated itself some while later, I keep disactivating it but it always comes back[:(]

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So far Orange and Free are the same then which I did rather assume. If you buy a 'pass' with Orange you pay by credit card so they have those details. Of course no self respecting terrorist would use their own card. No system is totally secure but you can make it terribly difficult so that illegal use is kept to a minimum.
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