The politics of Wi-Fi names

http://opensignalmaps.com/reports/politics-of-wifi-names.php

by JamesCRR • 14 years ago

113 63 14 years ago

We found 1140 results for "Obama" and an additional 6 that contained "Romney"" - for some reason people are far more likely to reference Obama over Romney when naming their router.

Seriously? Maybe because one has been president for four years and the other is just a blip right now with the potential of either becoming president or just another has-been?

sinak4• 14 years ago

Yeah that's a very good point. We'll change that sentence now :).

Edit: Updated page and added attribution.

camiller2• 14 years ago

For what it is worth, I think you may also be getting some overlap with collage sports. "Bama" in that context refers to the University of Alabama with "GoBama" and "NoBama" possibly being from fans and rivals respectively.

Not to say that either doesn't deserve pitchfork wielding mobs...

yycom• 14 years ago

And now it just doesn't make sense at all:

We found 1140 results for "Obama" and an additional 6 that contained "Romney"" - likely because Obama's been president for four years.

lordlarm• 14 years ago

From my hometown (Oslo) you found «Obama killed me» to be in favor of him. I'm not sure it is (or not), but still, kind of funny.

Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/lGXZA.png

JamesCRR5• 14 years ago

Hehe whoops, just changed that one, not sure what I did there. Another one I've probably got wrong is Obamanation, which I thought was good at the time, like a contraction of "Obama for the Nation" now I'm thinking it's a pun on Abomination. Not sure though!

Steko3• 14 years ago

"Obamanation" is a pretty common wingnutism.

planetguy• 14 years ago

Another one I noticed is "Obama's Network", which is in DC not too far from the White House (but definitely not at it). It's classified as pro-Obama, and if it were anywhere else it probably would be, but given the location I'd say it's just a joke designed to surprise passersby.

adrianbravo• 14 years ago

I think "obamanation" and all its variants can be interpreted either way. It is used with a negative connotation in many cases, e.g. obamanation.com or the book "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality."

JamesCRR5• 14 years ago

I was just thinking of that earlier, I think you're right it's probably negative. Will change.

gouranga2• 14 years ago

I could imagine that in redneck country.

I always call mine something rude. It seems to effectively stop people trying to connect to it. Security by lack of obscurity.

Currently it's iloveanal

sinak4• 14 years ago

:). Stay tuned for our followup report on worldwide sentiment towards anal versus vaginal intercourse.

blhack4• 14 years ago

People near me who do this usually get deauth attacked until they change their SSID.

If you want to act like an inconsiderate 14 year old with your wifi, so will I!

tedunangst3• 14 years ago

Why exactly are you so offended by the name someone else picks for their network?

blhack4• 14 years ago

Fine I'll reply to myself here.

I'm talking specifically about people who name their networks things like "Anal Creampie Snowball" or "Gaping Asshole".

I'm not saying what you're doing should be /illegal/ just that you're being a gigantic prick by doing it, and that you're inviting me to be a gigantic prick back to you.

drcube• 14 years ago

I've noticed lots of SSIDs designed to scare people away. "NSA", "Viruses", "SpyNet", etc.

scarmig• 14 years ago

For giggles, I call mine "Free Internet."

tikhonj• 14 years ago

There is an ISP in France called Free (http://free.fr).

Naturally, there are a bunch of Wifi access points called Free Wifi to confuse visiting Anglophones.

coreygoodie• 14 years ago

Nice. I went with, "<TOWN NAME> FREE WIRELESS...NOT".

junto• 14 years ago

I always feel warm and fuzzy inside when my laptop tells me that I am connected to ( . Y . )

raintrees• 14 years ago

I vaguely recall a recent reference about a guy offering to help his girlfriend get reconnected when their WiFi died and saw the SID "I can hear you when you have sex"...

nessus42• 14 years ago

There's a WiFi in my neighborhood called "It's us you hear having sex".

Maybe I should name mine "I can hear you having sex" in response.

andyking• 14 years ago

Mine was given a random name by my ISP, which consisted of the name of the ISP followed by a random string of three characters (it's a small ISP).

I was amused to get the piece of paper with my router telling me the SSID was "OriginBroadband_hax". I never did change it!

devindotcom• 14 years ago

How interesting. Of course it's a very quick and crude method, but still fun. Are these DBs available for further sifting?

JoshuaRedmond• 14 years ago

That's really interesting. Until recently I'd never come across people using SSIDs to express their political opinions, but one of my neighbours has just started using "Vote Labour" as theirs (Labour is the current UK opposition party). I can just about understand people expressing their like or dislike of Obama, but exactly how many floating voters will be swayed by a WiFi access point?

pavel_lishin• 14 years ago

How many will be swayed by a bumper sticker, or a tweet, etc., etc?

I think it's less about trying to sway people than it is about making a statement about yourself.

aw3c2• 14 years ago

Does anyone where I can download their data? It says Open and uses user-supplied data so I assume it is available somewhere?

sinak4• 14 years ago

Hi aw3c2 - at the moment it's just the maps that are open (which isn't great we realize), but we have an API on our roadmap. Individual data collected by each user is exportable via the app too.

Steko3• 14 years ago

http://gawker.com/5832665/do-not-name-your-wifi-network-fbi-...

Spoilers: I live in a very dense apartment building and my wifi network is FBI_Surveillance_Van. I totally thought of it first.

raverbashing• 14 years ago

Now I'm curious to find "FBI naming policy chapter V: computer networks"

ableal• 14 years ago

On that vein, this may help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_of_the_Culture_se...

(Iain Banks started with Nervous Energy and went downhill from there.)

dmix2• 14 years ago

Why even broadcast a signal? You just opening your router to get hacked... I learned that lesson twice.

CamperBob2• 14 years ago

Conventional wisdom is that turning off SSID broadcasts does absolutely nothing to deter people using hacking tools.

briandear4• 14 years ago

There's one of those in my Jersey City neighborhood.

NoPerspective• 14 years ago

Does this fit into the theory that when it comes to politics Americans vote out of spite. That Americans to a large degree vote against someone rather than for someone as a result of the limited amount of choices(2).

_wp3r• 14 years ago

gobama != G Obama

gobama = Go Alabama

Almost all of the entrees in Alabama were GoBama :)

JamesCRR5• 14 years ago

Updated!

bartbes• 14 years ago

I can't help but wonder why you'd name your wifi something negative. I mean, I can get into showing your support, but I wouldn't even think of someone I hated while naming my network.

cpeterso2• 14 years ago

What is OpenSignalMaps' business model? Do they sell the cell coverage data to network providers who are looking to improve coverage? The company has been around since 2010, so they must be making some money.

18pfsmt• 14 years ago

I find the naming of access points interesting; I've chosen a unique name for my AP, and wonder how common that is among the HN crowd?

Most of the APs in my neighborhood are "myqwest.xxxx" and I've always thought that was a function of laziness/ apathy, but perhaps it is in the interest of not standing out? Probably not, but I wish more people took interest in their routers as they are becoming quite capable nowadays. Fon was/ is a cool idea, and I think some company should try to take it to the next level since Fon seems to have stopped innovating.

hrrsn• 14 years ago

I left the default name (Apple Network c0bfcc) precisely so it wouldn't stand out.

JVIDEL• 14 years ago

Haha man, today was "one of those days" here in Argentina, and now this.

Can you believe Cristina (you know, the president) literally went and told a senator from her party in the middle of a speech "hey go easy with the nose candy"

Yeah so they guy went a little apeshit during an interview before that, but can you imagine a president telling that to a senator, from her own party, during a speech live on national TV?

That's Cristina, just to show the politicians in your country aren't as bad as you think.

RandallBrown• 14 years ago

I've been meaning to write a script to update a wifi access point every time I tweet but I've never gotten around to figuring out how to do it.

In college, my roommates and I spent at least 2 days trying to figure out the name for our router. We settled on "The girls upstairs suck" because some girls lived above us and we were college guys trying to be funny. Later on, it turned out they weren't paying for Internet and they were using ours. (We gave them the password so they could have Internet while theirs was getting "fixed")

I always try to name it something that passive aggressively yells at my neighbors. "Clean up after your dogs" "Don't be loud at 4AM". Right now it's called "Frasier Crane" because I just moved to Seattle and thought and used to like watching Frasier.

I love wi-fi names.

cameron_price• 14 years ago

I'm guessing the "obama is a trini" in ozone park brooklyn is actually positive... that's quite near a big trinidadian population.

The politics of Wi-Fi names

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