Jul 1, 2009

Get Free Airport WiFi

Blogger Felix Geisendorfer points out a clever URL hack that scored him free Wi-Fi at the Atlanta airport.
I found that I could easily visit sites like slashdot, Google, or even this weblog, when adding a ?.jpg at the end of the url. The next logical step was to automate that. I downloaded Greasemonkey and wrote a 4 line script that would add ?.jpg to every link in a document. That way I was able to browse most sites without a hassle.
This trick will only work on Wi-Fi networks that allow images to go through without a redirect, and though it may seem like a bit of a stretch, it's better than shelling out $7 for 30 minutes of Wi-Fi.

One of the users suggest to use "#" or "&" instead of "?", as "#" terminates the url as far as most of the browsers are concerned.

Next time, if i'll ever be stuck on an airport, i'll try this trick! :-D