Wireless chip in kid's laptop?

Question

We just bought a laptop for my son since he's starting high school this fall. The idea was that he could type reports and do schoolwork w/o having access to the internet to distract him and also so he wouldn't be tying up the desktop which I use a lot for work. So we get it home and somehow he's got an internet connection. We don't have a router so how is this possible? A lot of our neighbors have satellite dishes, could he be pulling it off that? How do I find out and can we disable it? Besides, wouldn't we get in a lot of trouble for this? Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

wouldnt remove the driver from the laptop for the network device as it will just keep detecting it as new hardware and reinstalling it,go into device manager and right click and disable the network adapter.

Answer 2

i used to do this (on porpose) when i had no internet connection. basically the laptop will be getting into your neighbours wireless internet, your neighbours must have an in-secure connection and the laptop is automatically connecting to it. if you dont want it then tell your neighbour to secure there connection. and no, you can not get in a ny trouble for it, it is your neighbours fault for having an un-secure connection. Hope this helps, Benjie.

Answer 3

The best way for you to prevent your son from accessing the internet is to remove the driver for the wireless adaptor.  Without the driver the adaptor won't function and thus he can't connect to the internet at home, friends house, internet cafe, etc.  You can't control what your neighbors do and if they're dumb enough to allow free access through their router than shame on them.

Answer 4

Well most laptops nowadays do actually come with the wireless card, so if there is a connection he could get into it. The most likely scenario is that one of your neighbours have a modem with a wireless router with it (not the satellite dished on their house) which gives the wireless internet connection, but they havn't put a WEP key (password) on it.

If you are really worried about it, try talking to your neighbours and askiing if they could put a password on their connection. That way you won't be slowing down their connection,a nd you don't have to worry about your son using the internet.

Hope that helps.

Answer 5

You can disable the Wi-Fi connection from the notebook itself but most anyone who does a bit of digging can turn it back on.  Finding the access point may prove rather difficult unless they were nice enough to name the AP with their name or house number and unless your in a fairly rural area, you probably have plenty of houses around you.  Even if you were able to discover where the signal is coming from, they may either be unwilling or unable to fix the problem themselves.

For alot of notebooks, the cards are placed on the bottom of the machine under access ports and can be removed easily. Either flip it over and take a look or check with the manufacturer and see.

If completely removing it is out of the questions you can try using the Content Advisor under IE.  For my version, select Tools>Internet Options>Content, then select settings under the Content advisor. Under the approved sites tab, add the following items individually as never: *.com, *.net, *.org.  This covers most websites.  Once you hit accept you'll need to select a password at the pop-up.  For the most part this will stop IE from hitting web pages and you can turn it on and off at your leisure under the same area under tools.  This however won't stop someone from installing another web brower but I'm assuming you'll be keeping an eye on the notebook anyways.

Answer 6

Wow - that is a lot of area to cover - sorry for the long post

1. How did he get Internet? - Someone in your area has a wireless router that is not secured. All laptops have wireless built in and enabled by default. So when your boy turned his new laptop on, it found the open connection for him.

The easiest way to turn it off is to go to network connections on his machine and disable the connection. You can do that by right clicking on the Icon for the wireless network and click "disable"

It's also just as easy to change back, so don't expect it to last. If he wants access the chances are he will get it.

I do not recommend that you use more drastic methods of disabling his wireless. It could be rather difficult to get things back to running later.

2. Can you get in trouble? Technically using someones Internet without permission is "theft of services". Is it easy or likely that someone will try to find the person and prosecute?  No  It's unlikely you will get in trouble

Now my soapbox

IMHO - trying to prevent him from accessing the Internet is counter productive. The point of the Internet is to allow people to access large amounts of Information  so they can grow and learn. Learning where not to go and what not to do in life is often just as important as learning what to do.

In addition - you have a new computer. There is not a piece of software ever written that was perfect. Today the internet is the method of choice for keeping computers updated and protected. Without an Internet connection, you will not be able to do that. In 6 months, that new computer will be in trouble, and you will be down at Geek Squad paying big bucks to get it fixed.

For all these reasons, I would get your own Internet connection and teach your son responsible computing. It's a lesson he will need for his whole life.