My net connection was dropped yesterday. After the standard reboot/check/repeat procedures I decided to call the ISP. The customer service person was happy to report that this was not a glitch, but that my connection had been cut due to too much spam coming from my modem…
I was of course a little surprised. We have 3 Macs + 1 Debian box in our home network, none of which, I'm pretty sure, are spamming. But then it hit me. Because the IOXperts driver/old Orinoco card combo in my sister's Lombard PB doesn't support WPA, and WEP is pointless, I decided to just leave the wireless open. I called the network OpenWiFi and promised myself I'd keep an eye out for any suspicious activity, which of course I forgot to do and I guess this was the result.
Well, MAC ACLs are now in place. What's interesting is that we had just been discussing this over at #afp548 and so it turns out that some ISPs are in fact cutting spammers off. Nice, but it sure doesn't feel so when you're on the receiving end of it…