Spyke

Anyone else live somewhere that has had people joining in a WiFi naming joke?

My WiFi is ‘Secret Rebel Base’.

My neighbours have added ‘Jabba the Hub’, ‘Obi Lan Kenobi’, and ‘Red WiFi-ve Standing By’. This makes me happy.

Anyone else live in a neighbourhood that embraces this kind of WiFi silliness?

View original on feddit.uk

Sadly in my apartment complex they seem to all use the default name given by the router (like Carrier-randomnumbers).

I have a friend who named his WiFi "Connecting..." which is diabolical

136

We had a bunch of “surveillance van #X” at an old apartment. I joined in.

This was before surveillance vans were a real threat though. Not as funny with all the ice shit these days.

9

In my neighborhood multiple people still have unsecure printers so the list always has more than one HP-Setup{numbers}.

9

The WiFi hotspot on my phone is called "Initializing..."

6

I worked in tech support for a few years and the amount of times a boomer read this out to me... Well maybe only a couple but it was funny explaining it to them

3
lemmy.world

My network is named "Hot Signals In Your Area". It used to be "Routers of the Lost Ark". My guest network is "Guesty McGuestface"

Unfortunately, no one else in my building has anything creative.

I've seen "Leader Desslock", "NSA_Hotspot", "Wicked Evil Jowls". In college someone in my dorm named their's "Business Isn't a Real Major"

102
Noxyreply
pawb.social

I should throw up a new "Antifa Countersurveillance Stationwagon" ssid

30
Starya67reply
lemmy.world

My neighbour's was Gaypeopleshouldbeshot. I moved out as soon as I could.

28

I would've mine up to match but milder. "Are the Straight Ok?" and "I've Seen Your Hateful Straight Ass On Grindr"

15

Opening up wifi list at every DefCon I've been to:

"Never gonna give you up"

"Never gonna say goodbye "

"Never gonna run around "

"And desert you"

74
lemmings.world

I cannot believe just how absurdly long that has endured - it's almost literally been an eternity in Internet time.

58
Noxyreply
pawb.social

I think it helps that it's genuinely a really catchy, uplifting, fucking excellent song, with a fun music video, and the artist really seems like an incredibly wholesome sweetheart.

19
GladiusBreply
lemmy.world

It also my Fortnite dance when I get a win. Just cause.

4
lemmings.world

Somehow I missed out on that entirely - I only learned of it relatively recently. Probably because I've never been into memes all that much.

18

Mine as well. My 2.5 is ithertzwhenIP My 5 band is BillWIthescienceFI

23
TheDoozerreply
lemmy.world

Mobile terhering hotspot is: 8 HZ WAN IP

I'm waiting for somebody to be looking at their phone, smile, and look around. It hasn't happened yet, but I chuckle at somebody getting it some day.

15

I had to think about it even after you pointed out it. The 8 as a standin for "it" wasn't doing me any favors in getting it (assuming I've got it right at all). The first thought I had was "8Hz? That'd be absurdly slow!"

3
lemmings.world

Make it a story. At some point change it to "megahertz", then a while later "gigahertz" - see if anyone is paying attention.

10
lemmy.world

Fortunately, not too many people are going to see it. I have two WAPs. The upper one is on the first floor and runs at just enough power to cover the 1st and 2nd floors. The 2nd WAP is in the basement.

Get much past 100 feet from my house and it's very difficult to pick up. While some of my neighbors 4 or 5 doors down are broadcasting their WiFi at full power, one is even completely open. LOL

2

I have two WAPs

Omg, please reference the song if you ever change the SSIDs

2
lemmy.world

All my neighbors are lame but I have two routers, giving me a total of six SSIDs to play with. So I have wifi names like "Trump Fucks Kids", "Charlie Kirk was a Literal Nazi", and "Where are the Epstein Files"?

68
Psythikreply
lemmy.world

Forgot to mention that I live in a red state too.

22

The "All my neighbors are lame" part makes sense now.

Love it

8
Psythikreply
lemmy.world

One router (the gateway) has a 2.4 and a 5ghz radio. The other one (the relay), a 2.4 and three 5ghz radios.

2

I tried so hard to get it to work, but the hardware I'm using only supports ASCII characters for SSID fields and I just couldn't finagle it around.

12
piefed.social

My neighbours have CSIS Surveillance Van 3

Mine is named Projectile Vomiting Cyst Fluid.

7

I had NETGEAR Gonna Give You Up before that if the gross out names don't do it for 'ya :p

3
lemmy.zip

Neighbors at my old apartment had KKK as their network name. They were huge pieces of shit who knew I could hear everything through the walls, so they would have entire conversations about me with slurs every other word. They were also armed, and talked about their guns constantly (again, knowing I could hear everything). Imagine laying in bed at 3am trying to get some sleep before a 7am meeting, and having to listen to two racist assholes literally yell through the walls just to harass me and make sure I couldn’t fall asleep.

Living there was so stressful.

45

I'm very sad that story didn't have a happy ending where they were both hit by a bus or got arrested in a drug sting.

I'm glad that was your old apartment friend.

12

That's when you mail yourself letters from "FBI sharpshooter association" or "Krav Maga instructors association", and after receiving them post marked, drop them in their mailbox, as if it were postman error.

8

Since OpenWRT supports special characters in wifi names, mine is (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

It fucks with older wifi chips but most modern stuff connects just fine

41

I'd set mine up to say "Distrusted Network" and hope it gets progressively sinister beyond that.

7

It’s not super creative but I named my mom’s network “The Internet” so when she asks for help with getting online I can ask if she’s tried connecting to The Internet.

34
lemmy.world

I know a guy in college whose dorm ended up with a wifi naming theme. Someone (highly suspected to be the passive aggressive super religious fundie on the floor above) changed their wifi name to "Stop, we can all hear you having sex"

So naturally, someone changed theirs to 'I can hear you NOT having sex'

at that point it was on lol.

33
lemmy.world

Be safe guys. Because of SSID location mapping services it's possible to pinpoint the location of many people in this thread.

31
feddit.uk

A lot of the SSIDs in this thread have been used multiple times in different locations. But you raise a valid point.

10
rumbareply
lemmy.zip

I just fed a bunch of them I expected to be unique through a skyhook provider, all but one so far had at least dozens.

5
x00zreply
lemmy.world

Some people have posted a list of the SSIDs around them. What's the chance some of those dozens also having one of the others nearby? Pretty low I'd say.

There's also the fact that you can use previously posted information by a user to narrow down the list. Let's say an SSID is found 50 times, one in each US state, but the user posted in another thread what state they are in? You just narrowed down the list to a single SSID.

Being safe online is a bunch of things together. You just need to piss of the wrong one to have it all combed trough. Posting the name of an SSID close to you is like posting your street name without the city or country name.

5
ohshit604reply
sh.itjust.works

Because of SSID location mapping

People really out there mapping SSID’s? I fail to understand how that data is at all valuable, changing an SSID takes seconds and a gram of brain power.

2

Oh thats easy, android uses ( or at least used it in the past ) these services for location.
Android will first try gps to get your location. However, gps needs direct connection to a satellite and can easily be either turned off or not working correctly.
It then tries to triangulate your location using cell towers and their location, which gives a rough estimate on your location.
Then it scans SSID's that are near to hone down some more on your location, and its this step that needs that data.

Edit: it used to also scan, and save, SSID names with a rough estimate location to fill and update this database. I say used to, cause thats how it worked circa 2009, so idk how it works nowadays

3

There's literally websites where you can search for them.

3

Very few people actually change their SSID. The bigger point is that, considering sites like Wigle.net exist and the Google Street view cars were designed to capture all SSID data (they hired the guy who made NetStumbler, a popular open source SSID scanning tool in the early 2000's), it's trivial to get within a few hundred feet with just a few SSID's in an area. When your neighbor has an SSID of Comcast-12345 (aka random string), there is probably only one location that has your SSID and the Comcast one in the same location. You can change your SSID every day, but your neighbors probably don't change theirs.

2
sh.itjust.works

I went with it_hertz_when_IP but have yet to see anyone with similar naming...

28

I haven’t seen collaboration like that but some good ones I’ve seen are ‘we can hear you having sex’ and ‘the gang gets WiFi’

28
sh.itjust.works

My phone hotspot is "Starbucks Free Wi-Fi" passworded of course.

My home is "Router? I hardly know her!"

A great password to use is "thepasswordtowhat".

Friend: Hey whats your wifi password?

Me: thepasswordtowhat

Friend: Your wifi

Me: What about it?

Friend: WHATS THE PASSWORD?

Me: thepasswordtowhat

Friend: Frustrated noises.

27
aussie.zone

Years ago my local firefighters were setting up a wifi setup that went across the town for them to use, so we named our wifi after theirs, about a week later we get a knock on the door asking us to change it because the firefighters around me couldn't connect to their network.

Not sure how they found out it was us, I think someone ratted us out.

27
iiireply
mander.xyz

Wifi hotspots can be quite easily triangulated.

14
lemmy.ca

Just a note since google maps your SSID: To opt out, change the SSID (name) of your Wi-Fi access point (your wireless network name) so that it ends with "_nomap." For example, if your SSID is "12345," you would change it to "12345_nomap."

And probably not a good idea to publish your SSID if you don't want your location known because of things like this https://wigle.net/

26

Pretty much everyone around here uses the default name. So its a bunch of "ARRRIS_xxxx", "Netgear_xxxx", and the occasional "LASTNAME".

Nothing fun aside from us unfortunately.

24

No community in jokes, but mine used to be "MailOrderWifi" and I had a neighbor who's wifi name was "OnlyGaysStealWifi" with no password

23

I'd steal it (using a VPN, of course) because I'm secure in my masculinity. Those that would be deterred by that are - in Gov. Walz's terminology - "weird."

2
Dew
feddit.nl

One of my neighbours has a pretty clever one. Michiel de Ruiter is a common Dutch name, so they made it 'Michiel de Router'

23
lumenreply
feddit.nl

Jonge dat is toch geen veelvoorkomende naam

1
Dewreply

Ik heb die naam nog nooit in het buitenland gehoord, 't is maar net hoe je het bekijkt lol

Maar deels heb je ook gelijk, misschien niet veel voorkomend maar wel heel Nederlands

1

Not Spying On You

Covert NSA Surveillance

I Got Hacked

Connect to AOL

Skynet Mobile Operations

We Didn't Start the Firewall

23

One of my friend's neighbors named their wifi "is this the Krusty Krab?"

Of course he named his, "no, this is Patrick"

22

No but ive seen one called "hot signals in your area" in zurich airport which gave me a chuckle

22

I called mine "Gay Lover Paradise" and just get angry looks lol

22
lemmy.ml

Everyone should change theirs to RELEASTHEEPSTEINwifiLES!

20
Fedizenreply
lemmy.world

If you name your wifi "epstein files" the feds can't see it.

20
Naz
sh.itjust.works

I had a bunch of Trek Nerds living near me it seems:

Enterprise-D

Borg Cube

Deep Space Nine

Federation Satelite or something

It was wild

19

I named my main & guest networks "I beat my Wi-Fi" and "Tell my Wi-Fi love her". I'm gonna create a third network to steal yours.

10

I named mine to reflect the local police force and my neighbours kind of went quiet.

19
sh.itjust.works

Lived in an apartment complex a while back. Found an SSID while setting up my network, Ebony3HoleEnjoyer. Never found out who dunnit.

19

Guess you don't have an "ebony hole", then.

EDIT: sorry for inadvertently spamming responses. I thought they weren't going through for some reason, but it turns out my Lemmy client (Thunder) doesn't make it obvious when a thread is collapsed (which is also too easy to accidentally do without noticing), so they were just hidden from my view. The only indication was a small "+n" number in the upper right corner, which I obviously missed.

7

Don’t answer; script kiddies can find out where you live based on these names.

17
lemmy.world

“The password of [neighbour’s SSID] is [embarrassing password]”

Or some such. Not sure if it was the real password, but soon after everyone was doing it to one another and it got people super confused.

17
lemmy.world

On a work trip in the mid 2010s. We were staying at a hotel located near FB/Meta HQ in Menlo Park.

Once I was in for the night, I went looking for WiFi and then I saw it:

SSID HideYoKidsHideYoWiFi

16

Don't they know you can't have kids when you have Wi-Fi - be it due to sterilization from the signals, or simply because you're both too addicted to social media to do the deed?

/s

4
fedia.io

My old name was " Mai Waifu" and now it's "[my last name] mojo dojo casa house". No on else around me have funny names which makes me sad.

16
ThePantserreply
sh.itjust.works

Always bad to name the wifi anything that can identify you. Used to be way more of a bad idea when it was easily cracked but back in the day if you pissed off the local nerd they could target you.

17
fedia.io

Thanks for the tip... I should probably change it because of that but it helped me talked to my neighbor about it. He found it funny

6

One that is popular in my country is Michiel de Router which is a play on the VOC man Michiel de Ruyter.

But yeah sometimes there's an FBI Surveillance Van or a "It's this one Mom!"

15
lemmy.ca

A lot of peeps have their name or "x family" But I see "YouShallNotPass" Right now mine are "Not Connected" and "No Internet"

15

In my last apartment I had mine set to "FBI Surveillance Van 9" and a neighbor set theirs to "Suspicious Drug Den". Before that several of us changed to variations of "Library Wifi Ext #" to pick on the Librarian next door. Outside of those, my favorite was "Need a Wifi password?" With the password set to "WhyNotZoidberg?" I had the meme printed on the fridge and everything.

15
Warl0k3reply
lemmy.world

Got into a petty pissing match with a sexist POS neighbor who was running a really sketchy (and locally illegal) AirBNB - as a joke I had a couple ESPs broadcasting SSIDs like "[their_address] Bedroom Camera" and "[their_address] Bathroom Camera" that I stuck on the wall nearest their house.

... Turned out to be a huge mistake. They'd actually set up several perv cams inside the house, which was discovered during the incidental investigation into all the human trafficking they were doing, something I found out about when the police showed up and arrested me for suspicion of being involved. Thankfully I was able to convince them I'm just some complete idiot that likes to think they're funny, but jeeze.

Funny in the retelling, though.

34
lemmings.world

Nah - the cops either were just doing "due diligence" to cover their asses in court, or were truly of "Keystone Kops" intelligence levels to believe someone who knows how to use ESPs would be that blatantly obvious when naming their devices' Wi-Fi.

10
Warl0k3reply
lemmy.world

Weirdly I'm not actually complaining about them doing due diligence in this case. Aside from all the shit he did to me (well mainly my partner) personally, the dude was selling bathroom footage of the children who stayed there, and there was a fair number of local accomplices in the whole human trafficking & child pornography thing. It took them about four hours to realize what was going on with me and we all had a genuinely good laugh about it, and that vile POS and several of his friends are rotting under the prison as a result of them being thorough.

Rare law enforcement win, though I stress that this is very much an exception to the norm around here.

22

I once had a wifi that had as many character as as I could fit from this sequence of long digits that Data reads out as Picard but I goofed. Someone else changed their wifi to "The 3 is supposed to be a C"

14
lemmy.world

I think I've seen "FBI Van" at an old apartment I used to live

14

Mine was named FBI Surveillance Van #3. Neighbor was a pot dealer and was freaking out, asking another neighbor if he had seen that signal. Best part? We were far enough away that the SSID would fade in and out at his house, like it was moving.

14
sh.itjust.works

Ours was "{town} Free Wi-Fi" when we lived in the town centre for a while, just to confuse tourists. It was more of a getting stabbed area than a fun SSID name area though.

14

Other than BeBlessedandMoisturized, my neighbors don’t seem too creative with their WiFi names.

13

I have a boring Wifi name and everyone around too, but this reminds me that I was once sitting on the train and was watching a video with bluetooth headphones in and texting with my friends and some jerk constantly tried to connect to my phone via bluetooth. A pop up window constantly asked me if I wanted to connect to this other guy's phone and since I was texting I came close to misclicking on 'yes' more than once. Then I renamed my phone to FuckOff and he got the message, since then all my phones are called FuckOff.

13

I wish to name it in a funny way. But there is a ton of devices that I have connected over the wifi and I dont have enough willpower to reconnect them all once I change the name.

12
ehxorreply
lemmy.ca

Reading between the lines I’d guess they’re wifi connected dildos

4

If I were your neigbor i would rename mine to: You dont know the power of the wi fi

5

Yeah, there are always some. I use a "hidden" network and don't broadcast my SSID so I keep it simple and easy to enter in on any device. Had a neighbor in the past who was nice enough and I let him use my wifi but then I turned into his tech support, fuck that. If the neighbors don't see my broadcasting they won't ask. Besides I keep as much as I can hardwired, it's just better.

11

I would suggest naming your 2.4 network "use channel 1 6 or 11. Google it" it fits barely

11

I'm in Texas, so mine currently says "Free Porn Here". In the past it was always some snarky bullshit. My buddy's is "FBI Mobile Team" or something similar. I think he's had one about the DEA in the past.

So nothing funny or clever about Wi-Fi or networking, but definitely not normal names.

11

Thats actually cool. My neighbours have incredibly boring names, default names like tp-link and netgear... Zzz.

11
mander.xyz

We have used the name Flexo for years if only because it makes me smile. No one else in the neighborhood is funny though.

11
jqubedreply
lemmy.world

UK, eh? That was from Imgur. Here’s a direct upload to lemmy.world

3

My girlfriend’s neighbors have “yer a wifi Harry” and “Harry you are a wizard” or something to make fun of the first one.

11
Matty_rreply
programming.dev

Don't share all your WiFi SSIDs my dude. Its very common to be able to find someone's likely location based on all the network names. Even Google and Apple use this technique instead of relying on GPS.

13

Come hang with me and Smith and Wesson!

What you're describing is called Wardriving, I've done it and used it to track/confirm someone's location

2

Mine is ‘HoloNet’, but it’s kind of a deep cut unless you’re really into Star Wars.

10

I have my 2.4 network named IsThisTheKrustyKrab and my 5 network named WutangLAN.

One neighbor joined in with Winternet is Coming, the other called theirs Childish Name.

10

I've been using "Riri Wifi et Loulou" for more than a decade. It's a pun on the french names of Huey, Dewey and Louie (it's supposed to be Riri Fifi et Loulou).

9

For a while I had House LANister and a few neighbors joined with GoT names. We all changed to more standard names after the disappointing finale

Now I have "this is the ATT router" that I changed the name to do some debugging (I wasn't sure which one was my own router since I run it as a bridge) and recently another neighbor changed theirs to "and my xFinity"

8

This has been our family wifi SSID for almost 20 years, and over 2 continents. 😂

6

Next door used to use “Kevin’s Porn”. We’re still “Porn For Kevin” lol

8
lemmy.world

The only network I can see is my own. But as soon as the bears get wifi we'll engage in some goofy hilariousness!

7

Was on a train to London once and spotted a wifi called ‘I shaved your mum’. I still chuckle about it now.

7
TeddEreply
lemmy.world

I'm in IT and use my hotspot as an internet umbrella for troubleshooting - my hotspot name is "FBI Surveillance Van". (I also carry a usb-c to eth adapter for those stubborn hardline devices)

3
midwest.social

There are five FBI Surveillance Vans in my range y'all need to get a new joke.

That's weird though, now there's six...

8

Sorry, FBI joke innovation is halted. New jokes are on ICE

2

Mine is NOTtheNSAvan, and I see in the list of active WiFi networks is one called fbivan

5

nope. most don't change it. I actually just looked and I did change mine but sometimes I blow it off.

5
lemmy.world

Years ago I had "pantomiming_suicide" and someone created one about calling the suicide hotline. It's actually a Mormon reference that I just thought would make a funny name but I can see how that wasn't obvious now.

5
lemmy.world

It is part of Mormon temple rituals. They don't phrase it like that but it's what they are doing. Luckily I got out before I participated in any of that.

4
lemmy.ca

I'm curious. The temple has 4 rituals

  1. baptism on behalf of your ancestral dead
  2. ritual washing
  3. promising 5 commandments that are above a regular baptisms promises to gain access to pass through to God's dwelling with power.
  4. marriage for all eternity.

Mormons dance around temple and associated rituals being sacred, not secret, so the command to not cast pearls before swine applies; but certain promises are not to share signals that show you made the extra promises, so just to be sure, mormons treat it all temple info as secret unless they actually thought about the words of the rituals.

I have been able to talk to Mormons outside of temples in pretty deep detail because I was respectful (not mocking).

Please be specific, what part seems to pantomime suicide? I'm thinking baptism on behalf of ancestors?

Shrug

3

I learned something today about something removed 35 years ago.

Planning my additional research, for someone alive to have gone to the temple and have done these, they would have to be at least 55ish. I'll try to find someone to talk about it.

3

I would encourage you not to write out the word “shrug” in your comments.

2

One of our neighbours has his set to "SAPS Surveillance Van" - "SAPS", South African Police Services.

Ours is named after my son's YouTube channel.. free advertising!

3

All of my WiFi names have been taken from the game American McGee's Alice (the first one): "Pool of Tears", "Skool Daze", "Hollow Hideaway", "Mystifying Madness", etc. Sadly, all of my neighbors are computer illiterate, so they always leave the router's default name.

3

Ah yes, the absolutely random number 621

2

I came up with: WI FI INdER NET ROOTE eRWÄLAN While I couldn't sleep on night. It only makes sense in German. I don't use it though cause I'm not sure if it's racist.

3

Not a common joke but pretty much every building I have lived in has people using random joke names for their wifi setup.

2

I had one once "FBI Surveillance Van 7" and the neighbors renamed to "CIA Underground Bunker" and "International War Criminal"

2