Is everybody aware that 'BT Fon' the exciting community of WiFi hotspots means sharing your home router with anyone who wants to sit or park outside your house to surf the web on their laptop?
I can see that in a large town or city this may be perfectly acceptable. However, in a small rural community where the only cars that park outside your house are visiting you then I feel this is an invasion of privacy. I am annoyed that I and many of my local friends were unaware of our location being entered on to the BT WiFi Hotspots map.
Rather than entering our Routers on this map as WiFi access points I feel it would have been more POLITE to ask us if we wanted to opt in. Rather than automatically setting it up, not making it clear and leaving it up to us to have to find out how to opt out.
Having opted out then to be advised to leave our router on for 48 hours for them to remove the Hotspot Facility. Surely it is 'my router' and I should have been invited to have this download only after I had agreed to it.
If this is idea new to you as well then you may like to click on this link to check whether you are providing a community HotSpot WiFi access point. You may not mind. But I think you should at least know about it. If you decide to opt out check carefully by clicking on the 'Check Status' link. I think the 'opt out choice' is inclined to make it look as if you already are - so do doubly check.
I may well decide to opt in at a later date. But will do so only once I have had chance to read all about it. I'll weigh up all the pros and cons and then make a decision. For myself.
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How to Opt Out can be found on this page here:
http://btsupport.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/btsupport.cfg/php/enduser/cci/bt_adp.php?p_sid=&p_faqid=12958&cat_lvl1=1812&p_cv=1.1812&p_cats=1812
Well I just pottered idly into twitter as you do and oh boy, did I find an Irate Lady T in there!! My knees almost knocked... :-)
I think this is an absolutely stupid idea from BT. How absurd. And creepy! Aren't we all advised to protect our Wifi connections? Just unbelievable. Well done you for pointing it out here so thoroughly.
I'm with Virgin. Cable. Cheaper, faster, much more reliable. Slows down a bit late evening occasionally. Otherwise perfect.
Keep telling these Fon people exactly what you think Lady T. (Fon? What kind of a stupid word is that anyway?!) X
Well I've since found out that if one has been provided with a 'free router' it remains in the ownership of the ISP. In which case I may consider buying myself a new one from the local Computer shop.
I'd go onto cable Merry BUT out here in the sticks we don't have such a thing.
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