Most of us can’t live without the Internet. After all, having a fast and reliable connection is required for entertainment, staying connected, and, for some people, even work.

So, what do you do when your internet speeds slow down and you discover a neighbor is leeching off your bandwidth? Do you simply block them from using it, or do you teach them a lesson?

In the following story, a couple finds themselves in this exact situation, and they do not let the neighbors off the hook easily. Let’s take a look.

Stealing my gf’s wifi strained (or ended?) their relationship…

After my girlfriend moved to her new apartment closer to both her sister and myself she obviously wanted internet.

Although she isn’t fully tech-savvy she does know her basics and thus explicitly asked the provider if she should be worried about “admin/admin” kind of wifi protection?

She was assured that it was all fully safe “out of the box”, NO “admin/admin”. In fact, just press a button to connect her laptop and her wifi network would be fully secured.

There’s nothing worse than slow internet.

So a few months or years later my gf started to notice that her internet speed went down, this became very apparent while video chatting with some of her family members in Japan.

Like I said my gf knows her basics so she knew that it didn’t have to be the internet connection itself, it could also be her laptop, or maybe the network cables had eroded due to age?

She decided to cover as many options as possible before contacting her ISP support desk, so she asked me to help.

It’s nice when you know someone who can help.

I’m a geek and I worked within the field of ICT for over 30 years now; mostly as systems administrator but also as IT manager or co-manager (during which I’d still try to keep taps with my colleagues and even cover shifts if the need arose).

So visiting my gf and getting to show of my “l33t” IT skills? 😎

It took me a moment but I discovered the issue: someone was leeching of her wifi. Technically the ISP support staff were right: this wasn’t a “admin/admin” kind of thing anymore, it was completely randomized. “Sorta”.

Turns out, there was a faulty design – just not what she expected.

You see, on their routers the wifi password was the same as the random SSID (aka network name!).

What. The. Heck?!!

I was quite angry at both this incompetence as well as the blatant disrespect for my gf’s privacy, maybe a bit too much but yah.

Sure, for some people this is only about “getting Internet” but what many people overlook is that such leechers also gain access to your private network so basically they could also access any public Windows (or Mac) shares you may have active, not to mention any other connected devices.

Fortunately my gf knew her basics, as I mentioned earlier, but I was still angry.

So I suggested something I had done earlier: Let’s replace this cheap router for a professional device.

Professional routers are expensive for good reason.

In specific the same kind of ZyXEL router that I used at my home so that we could set up a secured VPN between ourselves and get some other nice feats as well (like a private VOIP connection).

She agreed, so we bought her a new router together (we’re talking professional gear here, these things cost about as much as a high end smartphone so obviously we were going to split the costs considering that a mid-level could also have helped her out).

Now, even though I consider her previous router terrible, I still have to admit that it did provide some very useful features, like a syslog service.

It could also use USB storage so… I turned on wifi logging, plugged in a large USB memory stick and then we waited for the new router to arrive.

Here’s where his fun begins.

Then I got to work.

First, I set up my gf with a nice hidden wifi network so that no one could easily find it. Next we set up a much better security scheme and then it was time to get even with the lowlifes.

I set up a second wifi network which was completely the same as the previous one but this time I throttled it down a bit so that it couldn’t usurp the full bandwidth. Then I added some specific DNS “overrides”.

DNS is a service on the internet which translates names into IP addresses, which is what your computer needs to connect to something. You may care about “reddit.com”, all your PC cares about are the associated IP addresses.

Then, he kicked it up a notch.

Thing is: this service can be easily overridden. And I had studied the logs, so I knew exactly which sites the low lives visited the most.

So from now on going to “banka.nl” using this router would point your browser to a hardcore “not very legal” adult website. “not very legal” as in: the site didn’t bother asking for consent first but got you some close up screenshots right away.

Then it was time for “bankb.nl”; I redirected that one to another shady adult website.

I also noticed that a certain webshop was sporadically used by the leechers so I decided to redirect that one to a relationship counseling website: “When you think your spouse is cheating on you, come to us!”.

But he didn’t stop there.

It was around that time when I noticed that my gf’s router was using a more modern firmware than I had on my router.

This one also provided web redirection services: companies can use this to redirect specific websites based on their url to a local (or remote) webpage.

So, say you don’t want your staff to use social media then you could just tell the router to redirect, say, “facebook.com” to a local webpage which explained the “no social media allowed” policy.

He really wanted to teach the leechers a lesson.

Much to my delight this service also supported a randomizer trigger. See, I still remembered a website from the early days of the internet, something about a “goat from Sweden” which was so horrible that it became a meme on its own.

Seriously: a look at that picture could never be undone anymore, there’s a reason I still remember the horror now an easy 30 years later. So… I looked for, and found, a replacement and then happily added that to a randomized redirection service.

So every once in a while the leechers would open their favorite website(s) and no matter whatever kind of site they asked for they’d always end up with something completely and utterly disgusting on their screen.

It was time to wait for the fallout.

Then we waited.

I need to point out that my girlfriend did not fully agree with some of my actions, especially when she learned of the aftermath.

But… we never had an argument over this because she could also understand my pov (“don’t mess with my gf!!”) and she agrees that if you trespass, even in the digital world, then all bets are off and you lost your rights to a civil solution.

Don’t mess with a geek, mkay?

Here’s where the prank pays off.

One day my gf got home from work and noticed a huge moving van outside. She gave it no further mind, but when she got to her frontdoor she noticed that her neighbor 2 doors over was moving out.

She brought this up with her direct in between neighbor a few days later and as it turns out things completely exploded over there; the shouting and accusations could even be heard through the walls!

Seems the pair got into huge arguments about their rather explicit “choice” of websites and once the deed was done there was no room left for any kind of reasoning.

Things got really ugly.

One of the two even accused the other of “hacking the internet” because it was only after the first fallout that those “goating pictures” started to show up. As far we know they broke up.

For the record: I regret nothing.

I did remove the SSID for obvious reasons and also reset the DNS and forwarding sections and now things are back to normal. More importantly: my gf is still very happy with the router and the extra services to this very same day of writing.

Satisfied with himself, he offers a warning to everyone.

She’s working her way up as a 3D artist and the knowledge that all her work will be fully kept safe after she copies her projects onto my NAS is a deal breaker for her.

Seriously you guys: always remember that when you use someone else’s Internet connection, this includes free services, then you’re fully relying on their good will.

Such services could be easily abused as well, either through pranking like I did, or worse… how about I redirect your bank requests to a fake login page so that I can store and/or abuse your data?

Wow! Bet they’ll get their own Internet service next time.

Let’s see what the readers over at Reddit relate to this story.

This person missed the point of the story.

This comment points out that ruining a relationship is not cool.

This person explains why having unauthorized users on your Wi-fi is bad.

This person considers the poster’s tactics to be elementary at best.

Pro tip: never steal someone else’s Wi-fi.

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.