Cablevision Sued for Turning User Routers into Public Hotspots Cablevision is being sued by a man who claims the company's decision to turn his home gateway into a publicly-available hotspot violates the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. According to Courthouse News, lead plaintiff and Cablevision customer Paul Jensen says the company never asked for his permission before modifying the software on his rented router and opening up a public SSID to the public at large.

Comcast was sued for doing the same thing last year In Comcast's case, the functionality can be disabled (though it doesn't always work). Users can also avoid the problem buy buying and using their own router. In the Cablevision suit, the lawsuit complains this functionality cannot be disabled. "Cablevision configures the routers it leases to consumers so that the Optimum Wi-Fi Hotspot cannot be disabled. Thus, consumers wishing to opt out of broadcasting a secondary Wi-Fi network from their homes are left with no recourse other than to buy an entirely new wireless router, costing anywhere from $50 to $200." the complaint says. The lawsuit also cites a study from last year that claimed users can bear up to $23 dollars in additional electricity costs to operate Cablevision's suddenly-public router. When Comcast contested these findings, the firm in question (Speedify) re-did the test with newer routers and actually got even worse results. "The test established that such devices do use more electricity than routers that only emit one Wi-Fi network, even if no one ever connects to the second Wi-Fi network, and thus the engineers concluded that companies engaging in such practices externalize millions of dollars in costs onto their unsuspecting customers in order to establish these Wi-Fi networks," the complaint states. Update: Cablevision offered us the following statement on the suit: quote: “Our customers love having access to Optimum WiFi both in and out of the home, and this frivolous lawsuit appears to be the result of plaintiffs’ attorneys looking for something to do. For more than 40 years, privacy and security have been of paramount importance to Cablevision, and all Optimum WiFi access points provide both convenient and secure wireless broadband connections for our customers.” : Cablevision offered us the following statement on the suit:







News Jump Comcast Shuts Off Internet for Subs Who Were Sold Service Illegally; AT&T, Verizon Team To Stop T-Mobile 5G; + more news California Defends Its Net Neutrality Law; AT&T's Traffic Up 20% Despite Data Traffic Actually Being Down; + more news Are The Comcast-Charter X1 Talks Dead In The Water?; AT&T May Offer Phone Plans With Ads For Discounts; + more news Europe's Top Court: Net Neutrality Rules Bar Zero Rating; ViacomCBS To Rebrand CBS All Access As Paramount+; + more news Verizon To Buy Reseller TracFone For $7B; 5G Not The Competitive Threat To Cable Many Thought It Would Be; + more news MS.Wants Records From AT&T On $300M Project; Google Fiber Outages In Austin, Houston, Other Texan Cities; + more news States With The Biggest Decreases In Speed; AT&T Hopes You'll Forget Its Fight Against Accurate Maps; + more news AT&T's CEO Has A Familiar $olution To US Broadband Woes; EarthLink Files Suit Against Charter; + more news 5G Doesn't Live Up To Hype, AT&T's 5G Slower Than Its 4G; Cord-Cutting Now In 37% of Broadband Households; + more news FCC Cited False Broadband Data Despite Warnings; ZTE, Huawei Replacement Cost Is $1.87B, But Only $1B Allocated; + more ---------------------- this week last week most discussed

Most recommended from 77 comments

clocks11

join:2002-05-06

00000 22 recommendations clocks11 Member Nix the rental fee I like the idea of having these free wifi hotspots available to subscribers, but the cable company should get rid of the modem fee if you allow this. I think that is fair. It's silly that a company makes you pay to lease equipment that they are using to expand their network.

buzz_4_20

join:2003-09-20

Biddeford, ME 10 recommendations buzz_4_20 Member Yet another reason To make sure all you get is a MODEM from your provider.

If you don't own it, you can't control it.



Make sure there is a Firewall you control between you and anything that isn't yours.

NOCMan

MadMacHatter

Premium Member

join:2004-09-30

Colorado Springs, CO 7 recommendations NOCMan Premium Member not Millions, Hundreds of Millions 30 million customers, 30 a year in electricity costs is 600 million.



Also these things just pollute the airwaves. I'm in an apartment temporarily between houses after a move and these things are clogging up even the 5GHz channels. 2.4 is completely useless. Between them and Centurylink I dont know how people in Apartments or other MDU's even use wifi.

karlmarx

join:2006-09-18

Moscow, ID 3 recommendations karlmarx Member It's not about the electricity It's about a company using a RESOURCE YOU PAID FOR without compensation. The electricity has almost nothing to do with it. YOU paid for an internet connection to your house. When they turn your PAID FOR CONNECTION into a resource for something, that a) they don't compensate you for, and b)is something you were not aware of when you originally bought the connection, then the corporation is abusing it's power. I sure as hell do not want my router used as a public hotspot (I refuse to use a comcrap modem, so I use my own). However, when I originally signed up for comcast, I was paying for an IP address that was FOR ME. NOT for any random goon from the street, not for a potential security threat to my network. I paid for ME to use the internet. Companies ASSUMING they can use something they not only CHARGE ME FOR, but use it for their benefit need to be reigned in. Granted, if they offered a REASONABLE discount (say $20.00 a month) for use as a public hotspot, I could accept it. But that would never happen, so it's time to STOP allowing corporations to have the attitude 'Do as we say, not as we do', because that's just hypocritical on the level of the Dugans. shmerl

join:2013-10-21 1 edit 2 recommendations shmerl Member Modifying routers without consent is nasty But users should be smart and should avoid using default routers anyway. Why should they trust an ISP not to mess with it?