Virgin Use of your Router for Public Wifi Hotspot

mark31_2

I've just recieved a letter from Virgin announcing that my Router will be automatically included as a public Wifi Hotspot on their network unless I opted-out by logging in to my acount. They say it will be a seperate connection inside the hub in my home and that security will not be affected!!!!! Needless to say I'm very uncomfortable about this and have opted out right away. I don't believe this should be an opt-out but an opt-in situation and wondered what others thought, and if it was worth complaining to OFCOM regarding this practice. Mark

littleboo

In theory it's a great idea, BT have been doing it for years and I regularly connected to BT hotspots when I'm out and about. I don't know the details of how Virgin are implementing it, but what's you concern ?

mark31_2

This could be anyone outside my house using my router as a hotspot. Virgin havent asked my permission, they've just done it. It says it can take several days to get it turned off if you dont want it to happen. If traffic increases in the locality I suppose it could affect my broadband performance. Plus its only a matter of time before someone learns how to hack it. Wouldn't you be bothered if it was in your house and you were paying for it? There hasn't been any consultation either, they are just doing it to any customer with the latest Hub

AndyPK

If you don't enable it, you can't use other people's.

mark31_2

Actually when you opt-out it says you can still use wifi hotspots. A bit hypocritical to do that though. My main issue is no-one asked me if I minded..........

littleboo

mark31 wrote: »

This could be anyone outside my house using my router as a hotspot. Virgin havent asked my permission, they've just done it. It says it can take several days to get it turned off if you dont want it to happen. If traffic increases in the locality I suppose it could affect my broadband performance. Plus its only a matter of time before someone learns how to hack it. Wouldn't you be bothered if it was in your house and you were paying for it? There hasn't been any consultation either, they are just doing it to any customer with the latest Hub

I have BT broadband which is acting as a hotspot and it doesn't bother me, no. I think it makes a lot of sense as there are several million hostpots that I and my family have access to in return. BT have been doing this for years and before them FON were, its not a cutting edge concept. If you don't like it, disable it

[Deleted User]

There is absolutely nothing you can complain to OFCOM about.

It might be different if the provider simply enabled the Hotspot without informing you.

You have disabled the Hotspot, so what's the problem?

bazzyb

mark31 wrote: »

This could be anyone outside my house using my router as a hotspot. Virgin havent asked my permission, they've just done it.

It's not your router, it's Virgin's router which just happens to be in your home. They will be using it to access Virgin's public network, not your own private network.

It's good that they've given you the opportunity to opt out, but I'm not sure if they are actually required to do so as it's their own equipment connected to their own network.

DCFC79

mark31 wrote: »

I've just recieved a letter from Virgin announcing that my Router will be automatically included as a public Wifi Hotspot on their network unless I opted-out by logging in to my acount. They say it will be a seperate connection inside the hub in my home and that security will not be affected!!!!! Needless to say I'm very uncomfortable about this and have opted out right away. I don't believe this should be an opt-out but an opt-in situation and wondered what others thought, and if it was worth complaining to OFCOM regarding this practice. Mark

What is it your concerned about ?

A separate connection will be set up for the public wifi so your connection be exactly be used by anyone using the hotspot.

onomatopoeia99

You should change ISP if you are unhappy. Not to BT though as they operate a similar scheme.

kwikbreaks

I bought a Fon router quite some time back as running it gave me access to the BT wifi hotspots. It used to be setup so that any connection to it was tunnelled through the BT network and the user had a BT public IP not my IP. Then the Fon/BT partnership changed and that router stopped working so I bought a new type. That is Fon only and any public user gets my IP which gave me considerable concern until I realised that its performance was so poor it was pretty much unusable beyond my property - especially after I removed the antenna connection I still run it and get access to "BT with Fon" hotspots. As these are just home routers the signals are often very poor and very localised but can be better than nothing.

What you need to check on is whether users of your VM public hotspot get their own public IP associated with their login or just get the same public IP as you. I'm guessing they will be on a separate subnet from yours so should automatically be excluded from accessing your home network but that's worth checking too. If they get to use your public IP then remember if you are unlucky enough to have a jihadi or kiddy fiddler using your connection it will be your door that gets kicked in and your computers that get bagged up and taken away.