Sharing Wireless network with a neighbour

A neighbour came by today and asked if I would consider sharing my wireless network so that he can use his Xbox online, for a small contribution each month.

Having never considered this before, I'm not too sure of the actual risks of doing so, but my instinct is to say "no". Sharing my connection sounds like a potential bad idea. My network is via an Airport Express. At the moment the network is two desktop Macs (both in heavy use in the evening) and a Wii. The wii often suffers from a weak signal.

My concerns are:
- How this will affect the performance of my network
- What (if any) security/ privacy risks there might be (I don't know this guy too well)

As I said, I have little experience of such matters, so any thoughts/ advice would be great.

Joe

I would say since you don't know the person very well, say no. Over the years the only people I have helped in that way were close friends who happened to live next door and they did everything I told them to do. Even then with one friend, there were issues with them hogging bandwidth enough to slow things on my end down and I later found they were doing torrents that were not very legal (4 at a time) so no more connection for them! I got suspious when even my email took 3 minutes to come down so I checked the routers logs!

If your neighbor did something very illegal and it was caught, YOUR IP ADDRESS would be the one that would show on the logs. You would be busted and since it's your account be in trouble.

It's better to say no unless it's someone you really know and trust well.

dtravis not only beat me to it, but said it better

Not only that, but in some municipalities, it would be considered theft of service and may be subject to criminal charges.

NOTE: Thread moved to appropriate forum. Not just anything goes in Anything Goes

Thanks, Guys. Pretty much what I was thinking.