Illegally downloading stuff using public wifi?

[Nicole]

I am not going to do anything illegal, I am merely curious. If one were to illegally download something from lets say, a college campus' Internet, how could someone tell? If you were going to get in trouble for it, how long would it take and what would happen? Would they confront you physically or just not allow you to access the Internet? I really don't know anything about computers so all the lingo confused me when I googled this topic.

[livelypartner466]

by using wifi, provider gets your specific information about your computer, so it is kinda similar like using yur own internet. I have seen that there are done limitations to download speed, but have not seen anything too serious.

[firefly]

There are logs kept by the system administrator that will show what kind of traffic is going on with the network. If you are visiting sites that are known torrent sites, more than likely your MAC address will be "red flagged" and they will know who you are, what you accessed and when because you are logged in to their network. I personally do not know what the consequences would be, but downloading illegal files anywhere is never a good idea. Just pay the money for the media you want. Someone has worked very hard to make that and illegally downloading is morally the same as taking it right out of the store.

[deboerdn2000]

well there monitoring software can flag it literally right away that its an illegal download. and you could easily get in trouble right away or if your mac address shows up again they can easily ban you from the internet. they might even confront you in person and/or involve the cops depending on how what it is.