Tl;dr: don't take candy (or #Free gear) from strangers (or your ISP). #InfoSecFail

Another post about the terrible #InfoSec practices of rural telcos inspired me to share an experience I once had while establishing fiber service in a major metro area. #TaleofTwoCities

The ISP was offering "free" wifi mesh points, which I kindly refused because momma didn't raise no fool. When the technician arrived on install day, he offered them again. After I politely declined, he shrugged and put them back in the truck. I'm still not sure why he even needed to come out, since the house was already wired and had the ISP's ONT installed. But, that's another story.

Later that evening, I sat down to get things set up and realized my account in the ISP's app showed hardware. Worried that I'd be charged for something I didn't accept, I began to investigate. It didn't just show a WiFi router, it showed an active one with several devices that I don't own attached.

Apparently, the ISP had already decided to assign the device to my account long before the tech arrived. He must have decided to either use it at his next stop, or claim it as a job perk. Knowing that I was looking at hours of fun on the phone trying to explain this to #CustomerService, I had another idea.

Since I had admin privileges (that I didn't want or ask for) to this poor fool's network I changed the SSID to YouNeedANewRouter, set the password to an appropriate difficulty level, and booted all of their devices from the network. Within hours it vanished from my account. I was never charged for the equipment, and I spent exactly zero seconds dealing with customer service.

Dear reader, if that was your WiFi and I caused you to miss any deadlines, I do regret the inconvenience. But I hope you also learned a valuable lesson about the danger of "free" gear. Let this also be a reminder that ISPs are equally incompetent regardless of geography or market share.