Feb132012

How can I figure out who owns a hotspot?

Pankaj_kumr asks:

I seem to be getting a wireless connection in my home. I want to know the owner’s profile and find out who owns the hotspot. It is a 802.11G connection, SSID “SNM.”


Browser: Firefox 10
System: Windows
Tagged: , , ,

Comments for this Question are closed.

If you are looking for help, please ask a new question here.

We will be happy to help you!

7 Answers -

0 votes

Mike

February 13, 2012

You could take a look at your WiFi’s IP configuration and try “connecting” to the gateway listed via your browser. Some enterprise WiFi Routers or Access Points display basic information on the start page without logging in.

Also some commercial public WiFi’s or on Airports usually have a landing page when you first connect.

If neither is the case you mostly can’t find the owner of the WiFi unless you track it down by it’s signal strength and “knock at the door” where it’s the strongest.

0 votes

Jay.0

February 14, 2012

Name of the hotspot cna help guessing it.
Generally wifi range is around 50 meter, so something like Mike said, you can guess who has a wifi in your neighborhood.
or start downloading big files, the owner will find you :)

0 votes

Anonymous

February 14, 2012

Yes, probably the “knock at the door” method will give you the best answer :)  
And also, try WirelessMon http://wirelessmon.en.softonic.com/ ; it gives tons of real-time stats and info on hotspots.

0 votes

Anonymous

February 14, 2012

NetSurveyorhttp://www.performancewifi.net/performance-wifi/main/NetSurveyor.htm

Vistumber v10
http://www.vistumbler.net/

inSSIDer
http://www.metageek.net/products/inssider/

How To Tell If Someone Is Using Your Wireless Network
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/catch-snoop-logging-wireless-network/

0 votes

FIDELIS

February 15, 2012

Hello, if you have a mobile phone with wireless access it should be easy to find out.  Walk around with your mobile scanning for networks and it should tell you who the owner is by proximity.  The more bars you get in the signal, the closer you are to the location where signal is originating.

0 votes

Daren Han

February 15, 2012

As long as you are near to the broadcast area, u will see the frequency bar increase. The SSID will never tell you who it belongs to. If you use engenius wlan adapters you can see something extra such as the channel your neighbour is broadcasting so you can choose another channel to have a greater signal strength.

0 votes

Lee

February 15, 2012

if it doesn’t have a password, you could connect to it and look around in the network settings. If you open up Network (in Windows), it might show the names of connected computers that have files shared, and by default Windows names those as OWNERSNAME-PC, so that might give some clues. If you can’t connect though, there really isn’t an easy way to find out the owner other than doing as the others have suggested and walk around (which is really a pain, especially if your mobile device isn’t instant on updating the signal strength).