As an early teen my parents turned off the WiFi router at night and when not in use. I eventually found the neighbor had an exploitable WEP router from an Android app, and I used it to continue watching Minecraft and Happy Wheels videos on Youtube.
Yeah, there’s the old “strict parents make sneaky kids” saying that is often very true. Parents who try to lock down their tech often find that kids will just bypass the tech entirely. Nothing is more singularly motivated than a 14 year old who wants to look at tits, and locking it down only encourages them to do shady shit like get a secret prepaid phone, or hack the neighbor’s WiFi.
I was already really interested in computers myself. My own explosion of interest was a game called WarioWare: D.I.Y. that let you make minigames using a built-in editor.
I’m old enough you have to replace “cracking neighbors wifi” with cloning our modem and “youtube” with funny pictures from irc homies, but same. Working around internet access restrictions was a milestone between fun things I could do with computers and how they really worked
They would unplug our isp provided modem and take it to bed with them, so I tracked down another one from the manufacturer and copied the eeprom from theirs onto it. It was a simpler time :p
Similar situation: I legit taught myself how to use aircrack-ng when I was like 12 because I wanted to play Mario Kart on my grandma’s Wii, but it needed internet to download an update, which she didn’t have. However, the neighbor had a WEP-encrypted network, and I was staying the night. The rest is history.
Simple solution: log the kid into your neighbor’s wifi.
As an early teen my parents turned off the WiFi router at night and when not in use. I eventually found the neighbor had an exploitable WEP router from an Android app, and I used it to continue watching Minecraft and Happy Wheels videos on Youtube.
Yeah, there’s the old “strict parents make sneaky kids” saying that is often very true. Parents who try to lock down their tech often find that kids will just bypass the tech entirely. Nothing is more singularly motivated than a 14 year old who wants to look at tits, and locking it down only encourages them to do shady shit like get a secret prepaid phone, or hack the neighbor’s WiFi.
My son did this…
Congrats, pretty sure “mom took away my internet” is the primary entry point for IT professionals
I was already really interested in computers myself. My own explosion of interest was a game called WarioWare: D.I.Y. that let you make minigames using a built-in editor.
I’m old enough you have to replace “cracking neighbors wifi” with cloning our modem and “youtube” with funny pictures from irc homies, but same. Working around internet access restrictions was a milestone between fun things I could do with computers and how they really worked
What’s the modem clone about?
They would unplug our isp provided modem and take it to bed with them, so I tracked down another one from the manufacturer and copied the eeprom from theirs onto it. It was a simpler time :p
Similar situation: I legit taught myself how to use aircrack-ng when I was like 12 because I wanted to play Mario Kart on my grandma’s Wii, but it needed internet to download an update, which she didn’t have. However, the neighbor had a WEP-encrypted network, and I was staying the night. The rest is history.