Now that USA is waking up, Europe is in full swing and Asia is still not asleep our shop has collapsed due to Fontenna purchases. Please be patient! We are sure that things will be back to normal in 3 hours!

And also I am getting tons of enquiries on the issue of why should anyone be a Linus anymore. My answer is that some people just don´t care about money. You know, think of blogs, many don´t have Ads. So if you are a blogger without ads for example, stay a Linus. But if you want to make money through showing WiFiAds and selling passes to the community and roam the world for free then become a Bill!

Follow Martin Varsavsky on Twitter: twitter.com/martinvars

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Daniel on June 12, 2007  · 

Well, may I suggest that there is a link between this “All foneros can become bills now, cos the have the same advantages” and the boingo deal?

And may I also suggest, that allowing Aliens to access the internet will heavily increase the account number of FON. I mean, just change your MAC, create a account that you don’t even need to verify and surf for 15 minutes. Repeat till Fonera locks you out and go to the next Fonera. These new Accounts will surely help FON to find a Buyer. The more Customers you have, the Bettet. And if 50% of them are worthless, who cares, as long as they don’t notice ’till the deal is done…

Come on Martin, what were you thinking when you came up with this? Have you even thought about how the community will react? Or is it like this: “Aw, the usual people will moan about this, but most of the Foneros give a s*** about this. So lets do it! Atleast I’ll earn money.”

On another topic: Whats with all the stuff you are logging about your employees and the customers. Surfing behaviour? Payment? Physical and Mental health? Oh, and you’ll share this informations of course too. Nearly anyone who asks. Check the FON board about this, Kyros wrote a nice thread about this.

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Al on June 12, 2007  · 

Can I ask about the ads. Is Fon paying Foneros 5c everytime someone sees an ad?

Also, how do we opt out of ads? If I don’t wish to show Fon’s ads, can I put my own ads instead?

Thanks.

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swimgod on June 12, 2007  · 

YAY! i finnaly got my fontenna in the mail its so great, before i hook it up to my fon which i bought a omni-directional 8dbi attenna for, i hooked it up to my 108 netgear wifi card… and im finding networks that are incredible far away! the Fontenna seems to be doing its job :).

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Larissa on June 13, 2007  · 

I really don’t care about making “money” (you need hundreds!! of aliens watching those adds, until you’re able to click the payout button). I don’t blame all those people believing they’re going to get anything in return when collecting all those payback points.
My question: is it still fact that Boingo users won’t be able to use my fonera when I stay Linus (unless they register as an alien watching ads to surf 15 min for free)?

To my understanding, there’s nothing the fon “community” gets in return from Boingo.

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Martin Varsavsky on June 13, 2007  · 

Larissa,

If u r a linus boingo users will not use your fonspot.

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Martin Varsavsky on June 13, 2007  · 

Daniel,

We have measures against that we are preparing, but we can´t disclose them for security reasons.

In any case there are so many people who leave their wifi routers open in this planet. Sometimes, when I read comments like this, I believe that people think that the rest of the planet have nothing better to do than to hack a single wifi access point and watch a lot of commercials.

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Fernando on June 13, 2007  · 

Hi Martin

I was wondering if you are going to update the range of each Fonero in the google fon-map, so it reflects a relaistic range for each Fonero. For example, if a Fonero has purchase the fontena it will show a bigger green circle on the map than a fonero without it.

Cheers

Cap

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Daniel on June 13, 2007  · 

I woudn’t count MAC address blocking a security measurement. And I also don’t agree with security by obscurity.

It’s true, that there are open WiFi APs out there, some because the user don’t know better and some because the owners decided to leave them open, so other can use them. BUT: I joined FON because FON dosn’t allow unknown persons to access the internet over my connection, because I don’t like to allow complete strangers to connect. But this 15 minutes free access with accounts, that don’t even need a activation degrees my FON Spot to a complete open connection. And I, and many others, don’t like this.

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Martin Varsavsky on June 13, 2007  · 

Yes Fernando, we are thinking about that. The best would be to allow foneros to choose a shape of range that best adapts to his window, so we know which way the signal is travelling.

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Martin Varsavsky on June 13, 2007  · 

Daniel,

Fon has my place with WPA key and nobody can enter through that.

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Charbax on June 14, 2007  · 

I think you should offer Fontenna users a bunch of “FON WiFi hotspot” orange stickers to people getting the Fontennas, and ask those Foneros to walk around their neigboughood with their laptop, and put up stickers on walls, doors and more wherever they can test that the Fontenna is reaching..

FON should partner with retail stores chains like supermarkets and such, to simply get the permission to put up a few FON stickers on their doors whenever there is a Fonero in the neighbourhood with tested Fontenna range into that store. The FON website for each country would have a list of retail and supermarket chains which have given the permission to FON to put a sticker on their entrance doors if they are covered with FON hotspot. (FON could maybe calculate which Fonera is accessed from the store, and thus also give a few cents to the store owner whenever customers are accessing FON in that area.

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Martin Varsavsky on June 14, 2007  · 

Charbax,

We do send stickers with our foneras and we will definitely send stickers with the fontennas.

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Daniel on June 14, 2007  · 

Martin,

i know pretty well what the Fonera is and what it can do. The point is not people connection to my private network. That can be handled by some iptables rules. The point is, that someone can access the internet with the ip address that can be associated with my name. 3 days ago this wasn’t possible, because you had to sign up and enter your credit card or paypal account if you were a alien or a bill, or you needed alteast a correct postal address if you were a linus. But you don’t need anything of this now to access the internet on any FONSpot out there.

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Martin Varsavsky on June 19, 2007  · 

Daniel,

Fon believes that we have enough information to provide any security agency that it is not you who were on line.

michael j on June 20, 2007  · 

remember, despite the advance of intrusive laws that are masked by the real fear of terrorism, we are still innocent until proven guilty.

the security folk have to prove that a crime was committed by you – it isn’t your job to prove it wasn’t.

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