Watch Your Wifi Usage at Atlanta Airport

+ Posted by Josh Hallett on 02.14.07 // 08:01 AM

I learned an important lesson yesterday at the Atlanta airport. If you are using the paid wifi in the terminal and you open up a desktop-based RSS reader like NetNewsWire, the network assumes your flurry of RSS-grabbing activity is a suspicious event. About 10 seconds after opening my RSS reader I was presented this message in my browser:

RSS Did This to Me!

Yep, I was blacklisted. The 'system' assumed that my machine was infected with a worm or virus. In the end I was able to experience around a minute of my paid wifi service.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Visitor Comments

I thought you were going to say that they suspected you of terrorism for your RSS-grabbing activity. I was going to close my laptop lid forever in the name of patriotism to support the troops.

Anomalous? I must say I'm impressed with the Atlanta airport's vocabulary.

Golly, but... I can understand. It makes sense. I don't know how big your blogroll is, but I can imagine that large multiples of network connection attempt can look like the behavior of a certain kinds of attacks.

This happened to me in my local library yesterday.

However, I wasn't using anything like an RSS feed, I was just browsing MySpace.

Also, the problem persisted when I was on other wireless networks, such as my home network.

Pretty crappy.

Can you tell me how you fixed the problem? I to was at the Atlanta airport and the same thing happened to me. I am now home and when I open up Firefox it gives me the same message. I tried uninstalling Firefox and reinstalling it but that did not help. I also uninstalled Boingo to see if that would get rid of it and it has not. I emailed them but of course have not heard from them.

Thanks

Delete the cache from your browser(s)!

This issue was very difficult to sort out, and the thread was right on topic. My friend had the problem on Firefox and IE7 on Vista. I thought that unusual. Finding an Apple thread really peaked my interest. And yes... he had just passed through Atlanta today!

Many thanks.

Post Your Comment






Blog Search
About Josh Hallett
Recent Blog Posts
A Basic Social Media Data-Set
posted on: Jul 2, 2009 at 09:31 AM

Equivalency or Not to Equivalency
posted on: Jun 30, 2009 at 09:35 AM

On Domain vs Off Domain - Part 2 - Or What Jakob Nielsen Said
posted on: Jun 29, 2009 at 09:43 AM

The Launch of Voce Connect
posted on: Jun 16, 2009 at 02:22 PM

Twitter, the New RSS
posted on: Jun 15, 2009 at 10:13 AM

WordCamp Orlando - December 5, 2009
posted on: Jun 11, 2009 at 09:43 AM

Hey Publix - Your First Store is For Sale
posted on: May 27, 2009 at 10:42 AM

Back in London
posted on: May 18, 2009 at 04:13 AM

Syndicate
Subscribe via E-mail
Where I Work

Blogs I Read
Photos
www.flickr.com
Location