Just wondering is there is any risk in using interenet for free just because a neighbour has not loicked his internet and is wifi....
I know it's not good and you will have to depend on someone's internet... but just curious to know using such signals is even detectable and any violation in switzerland

It is certainly detectable. He can see you on his network. He may decide to reverse hack you.

Not too sure about the legality, it can be construed as theft of electricity etc...but what's wrong with asking him ?

This topic is heavily argued in court. On the one hand, it can be seen as theft, for you are using services for which someone else is paying for. Like going into someone's house to get something in their fridge because the door was open.
However, it can also be understood that it is everyone's responsibility to secure his/her own network, preventing intrusion (i.e. locking your front door). So both are valid arguments.
The most important point you realise is that a) you are using someone else's internet, if it goes down, so does yours b) the neighbour may very well find out and decide to take legal action and c) no matter what happens, any illegal activity you decide to undertake on his network will have legal consequences for YOU, not the owner (necessarily, for it can be seen that he made it easier for you to commit the crime, however this would most probably not hold up in court these days with internet everywhere).
Tread with caution in these waters, friend.

In most cases, though, as the user you are leeching from is really too stupid or too lazy to lock down his AP, he (or she...) is never going to find out, unless you have P2P downloads that take up all the available bandwidth.
Normal browsing is - provided a reasonably fast internet-connection exists - not detectable.

Most routers/APs will show the connected clients' MAC-addresses.

Another PC on your network is easily detectable to someone whose network printer has lost it's IP lease to a new guest, or you find your port direction/mapping failing because a guest now has your IP. Detection doesn't have to be limited to a noticeable loss of bandwidth.

What kind of moron runs a printer with DHCP (unless the mapping is static, which I'm sure not many APs can do at all)?

If you leech bandwidth from someone else, you certainly don't let DHCP assign an address to your device, either. That would be equally moronic.

I have a neighbor with an open network and I use it when mine is down. I wouldn't use it like it was my own network, I don't bank or do anything where I would have to input my personal info.

I doubt they could hack into your computer unless you have security holes like open sharing or a backdoor but they could read the packets of info possibly. I have a pretty complex network with an external and internal network. I doubt they would break into my internal network and the external network is for testing, coding, installing apps and web projects. I had my external network hacked in the past, many years ago but it was my own fault for running unstable UNIX distros while they were in development. Getting hacked isn't such a big deal if your computer doesn't have any personal info on it or so long as they aren't using your network to hack from.

The kind of moron (>90% of home users) who don't know DHCP from DHL, I expect.

If you use someone else's connection, and you have a properly configured network and firewall in place, there's little danger. Anything using HTTPS, like banking, is no less secure hijacking a connection, than using your own.



And check out upsiddownternet. for advice on running your own network open.

Almost all home networks. When your Mum and Dad plug in a printer from PC World they like that it just works. If they had to go through IP configuration for printer setups each time they plugged in a new printer that would be ridiculous - even moronic possibly.

i did the same thing when i first moved here, but i asked the neighbour and gave him a few chfs each month to share the line.

as a precaution, i also encrypted all traffic and tunneled it through my own server.

Yeah, but then they probably use bonjour, where the device name never changes and the configuration actually relies on the name, not on the IP.
At least, this seems to be they case for the Brother printer of my mother.

How else would the user have found out the IP of the printer the first time?

That's Apple speak. It's different in the Non-Apple world. (>85% of the world)