Price gouging for Internet use

[D-cat]

On thing i found out is that a lot of dial up ISP's use the same phone numbers.

Yes, there are shared modem pools for some ISP's, usually the particularly cheap access ones that you can pick up setup discs in a supermarket or such. It's actually a phone service, where a single cable can handle somewhere on the order of 50 modem connections. It's pretty cool stuff, but about where the technology stopped as DSL became affordable to the masses.

[Jonathan183]

No more than at any other time.
Using dialup also makes you a client on a network.
So theoretically when you're connected by modem you're vulnerable too.
If you're THAT worried about it, make sure you have a software firewall running that's setup right so it will alert you to any activity.
This applies when you're connected through dialup also.

I agree a software firewall is essential for dial-up and IMHO wireless. The only time I would consider not using a software firewall is if a hardware firewall is provided for example by a wired router.

In your instance you will be slightly more vulnerable than others because you do not have control of the wireless router (because you want to use someone else's for free ).

In your position I would probably setup a different user account for the wireless web browsing ... make it a normal user (no sudo rights - don't forget the first user you setup on Ubuntu is the system administrator by default). Us the wireless account for non-critical stuff only, and don't give that user any access to personal information that may be useful to others ...

[cousinlucky]

Thanks for the advice!!

Both Ubuntu and suse 10 come with Apparmor but they are useless to me because I do not know how to configure them. Is there an effective linux software firewall that even I would be able to configure?