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Steal Boingo wireless by clearing your cookies
If you've got time to kill at the airport, wireless can be a life saver. In most terminals, however, wireless isn't free, and three out of four of the available providers charge an arm and a leg for service. So what's a cheapskate to do to access his Facebook account without paying through the nose?Steal wireless, of course. Most people know that if they stand with the proximity of an airline lounge, many of the clubs have unsecured wireless networks. Other open signals can proliferate through the terminal as well, and its not uncommon to see people wandering around the empty halls, holding up notebooks to the sky.
Another way that one can score free wireless comes by using a loophole in the Boingo "sponsored ad" service. Many (not all) Boingo hotspots offer a few minutes free for those willing to jump through a hoop or watch an ad or try out a free service. In JFK's terminal 8, one can get 20 minutes of free service by trying out Microsoft's substandard search engine, Bing.
Boingo and your web browser calculate this time using what's called a cookie, a small thread of data that's stored on your computer. And cookies, like all security tidbits, are removable. All that you have to do is clear your cookies, reload the Boingo page a few times and reclick the free service ad. In Firefox, it goes like this:
- Connect to the Boingo hotspot.
- If you don't immediately see an ad for sponsored service, reload the page or navigate around a bit on the Boingo website. It's possible that this market doesn't have a sponsor, so don't be disappointed if nothing pops up.
- Jump through the hoops for free service.
- Update your Facebook status, Tweet what underpants you're wearing and stalk your new love interest online.
- When you run out of time, click Edit|Preferences|Privacy|Show Cookies
- Ignoring all of your embarassing stored cookies, navigate down to "boingo.aero" or anything with boingo in it.
- Click "Remove Cookies"
- Reload the Boingo connection page. If necessary, disconnect from the wifi network and reconnect.
- Repeat
Filed under: Airlines, Airports, Budget Travel
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Glenn Fleishman Sep 27th 2009 11:47PM
Why would you condone theft of services? You're essentially recommending fraud.
desigooner Sep 28th 2009 12:14AM
Bing ? Substandard ? Really ?
There's no reason for uncalled hate especially if you haven't tried it .. Bing is actually a very good search engine and has replaced google for me, esp. with the new google way of bumping down other sites for its own content !!
Shame on you for writing such an article and then criticizing a service because its from microsoft.
BrianM Sep 28th 2009 5:19AM
+ 1 for Bing, and with this being a travel site the spectacular photos of our world encouraging people to travel I would think that gadling would encourage it. Check out the hammerheads in the Galapogos Island's today, Swarovski Kristallwelten yesterday, a scallop farm off of vancouver island the day before, etc.
-1 for Journalistic integrity, how was that comment even remotely relevant to the article, I guess AOL employees are still bitter over the whole Netscape thing.
Xenia Kisantal Oct 1st 2009 7:33AM
I would recommend Momondo instead of Bing. Momondo has recenly been re-launched with new even more user friendly features. I think that the new design is more appealing, as well as Momondo only focuses on travel.