Have you ever had friends over to your house, and they ask whether they can use your WiFi network? While everyone is sharing the same network, wouldn’t it be fun to play a few pranks – like flip all of the images on their websites upside down, or redirect all of their website searches to a hilarious website?

Or, like the situation I once faced while trying to do a WiFi tether at the mall – you may have people attempting to use your wireless network. In that situation, I had my Android phone transmitting its 3G data via a Wi-Fi hotspot (which I forgot to password protect), so that I could get on the Internet with my laptop. I use Open Garden to do this, and the nice thing about that app is that it alerts you when anyone joins your network. I was surprised when it alerted me to people in the mall connecting to my network.

I wish I had Network Spoofer installed back then, because it would have been a blast messing with the people trying to steal my network.

Here at MUO, we’ve offered you different ways to hide yourself from other network users, like Dave’s article on faking your location while on the Internet, or Jack’s article on using a fake IP address to hide yourself. In this article I’m going to show you how to intentionally let people find you and steal your network for the sole purpose of messing with them. Or…you could use these techniques to mess around with friends using your home network.

Network Spoofer Can Be Lots of Fun

Network Spoofer is an Android app made for rooted phones. It lets you mess around with other users on the same network that you’re connected to. It can do things like redirect their web pages or mess around with images or text inside those web pages.

Obviously, this could be used for a lot of fun Internet pranks, but it could also be used on public networks to do things that aren’t quite so nice. MUO does not condone that kind of misuse of this application. Plus, it’ll get you kicked out of a public library or Internet cafe, and you’ll never be allowed back in – so don’t do it. However, if your intention is just to have some fun with friends, or to teach a lesson to people in public places that try to steal your Wi-Fi hotspot…this is the app for you.

Setting Up Network Spoofer

When you first launch Network Spoofer, you’ll need to click on the Setup & Install button to get the application going the first time.

Once it’s ready, you can select from a decent sized list of fun hacks. These include redirecting people to kittenwar.com, or your own custom URL. It lets you blur images on web pages, change text or images, and even redirect every YouTube video someone tries to view to a “Rick Roll”.

When you click on one of the spoof/hacks, you have the choice to use the network you’re connected to (default gateway option), or run it passively. Running passively is the option you want to use if you’re operating a hot-spot with your Android phone, with an app like Open Garden for example.

In the case of operating on the network you’re connected to, you have the option to run the prank against all users connected to that network, or against individual users on the network. If you want to target a specific user, you’ll need to find out the IP address of their device or computer first.

Once you’re running, you’ll see the “Spoof Running…” status at the top of the window, and the “Output” script inside the window will be scrolling as your phone is now modifying that user’s network traffic.

Now that you’re up and running, let me show you a few of the really funny pranks you can play on your friends with this little Android app.

 Pranks to Play With Network Spoofer

The easiest and simplest prank to play is the URL redirect spoof. This lets you redirect any website the user types into the URL bar to a different website of your choosing.

You can choose the default “Kitten War” website, or customize one of your own. As you can see here, I set it up so that the user would be redirected to my blog no matter what URL they tried to type in.

When I typed www.google.com on the browser on my laptop, while the Android Network Spoofer was running, sure enough the browser got diverted to Top Secret Writers.

Just think of the fun you could have with this little tool when your friends visit you. Just set up the hack to redirect people on your home network to some really funny web page, enable Network Spoofer, set your phone down on the counter and walk away. Everyone will be all confused why the Internet keeps sending them to the same web page no matter what they do!

Another funny prank that will confuse your friends is blurring images. You can blur all images on any web page they visit. I found that this hack works well under IE or Firefox, and not consistently under Chrome. It also isn’t consistent from one web page to another, so you’ll have to enable it and then wait for people to visit a web page where the hack works.

Another really funny prank included on Network Spoofer is to replace all images on a website with a picture of your choosing. I enabled this using a really funny-looking picture of our pug in a flowery frame. Look what happened when I visited the TSW Facebook page, which normally has a very fierce and intense looking header and page icon.

Yeah…not so fierce anymore! I think this one could get a good laugh from friends without even trying very hard. They’ll become convinced that a website got hacked, until you stop laughing long enough to tell them that they’ve just been pranked.

Another one is the Rick Roll hack. This one will redirect any YouTube video the user tries to view to the 1987 Rick Astley song “Never Gonna Give You Up”.  Here’s how this Internet prank looks. When I enabled this hack with my phone, I went on my laptop and clicked on a video of the “Best marriage proposal ever”.

Instead of seeing my selected video, the video of one of the worst 1980′s songs ever started playing.

That’s hilarious. Can you imagine the look on your friends faces when they can’t figure out why YouTube won’t “let” them watch any video other than Rick Astley?

Another funny one is the text change hack. This one lets you revert certain words on a page to an alternative word. I tried using two words – replacing “the” with “whooohooo” and “it” to “hoopla”.

Here’s what happened – only the “it” replacement worked, so I think the app can currently handle only one text replacement at a time. But when you look at the results, it’s pretty funny. Here’s what happened when I tried to view an article after the hack was active.

As you can imagine, this little tool can be a lot of fun. Again, avoid using it on public networks or you’ll be kicked out – trust me, it’s not worth it. This is just a tool for pranking friends, or to “punish” people that steal your wi-fi hotspot.

Keep in mind that there are some limitations. A few of the pranks work most of the time, but not all of the time. Also, if you want to use Network Spoofer with a hotspot app like Open Garden, make sure you have your phone plugged in because if not, you’ll drain all the juice from your battery really fast – Network Spoofer is a real energy hog.

So give Network Spoofer a try and see whether you can get some laughs out of your friends. Have a blast, and then come back and let us know how your Internet prank went in the comments section below!

Image Credit:Masked Man Via Shutterstock