Story highlights Marriott fined for blocking guests' personal Wi-Fi during a conference
FCC announces $600,000 fine against hotel chain
FCC: Marriott must cease "unlawful use of Wi-Fi blocking technology"
Hotel chain says it was acting to protect guests "from rogue wireless hot spots"
Think hotels are deliberately blocking your personal Wi-Fi networks so you'll buy theirs?
No, it's not just a conspiracy theory. It turns out the federal government is concerned about it, too.
Marriott has agreed to pay a $600,000 fine after the Federal Communications Commission found the company blocked consumer Wi-Fi networks last year during an event at a hotel and conference center in Nashville.
At the same time, Marriott was charging exhibitors and others as much as $1,000 per device to access the hotel's wireless network, the FCC announced Friday
"Consumers who purchase cellular data plans should be able to use them without fear that their personal Internet connection will be blocked by their hotel or conference center," FCC Enforcement Bureau Chief Travis LeBlanc said in a statement.
It's the first time the FCC has investigated a hotel property for blocking its guests' Wi-Fi, according to a senior FCC official with knowledge of the investigation. The unlawful blocking isn't "jamming" in the traditional sense, where someone uses a jammer device to block wireless signals. Instead, Marriott employees were using the hotel's own Wi-Fi system to block other people's hot spots, the FCC official said.
The order doesn't just affect one Marriott property.
Under the FCC consent decree, Marriott must not block guests' Wi-Fi at all of the properties it owns and manages. The company must also file compliance plans with the FCC every three months for three years.
A federal investigation of the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center in Nashville found that Marriott employees had used "containment features of a Wi-Fi monitoring system" at the hotel to prevent people from accessing their own personal Wi-Fi networks.
"It is unacceptable for any hotel to intentionally disable personal hot spots while also charging consumers and small businesses high fees to use the hotel's own Wi-Fi network," LeBlanc said. "This practice puts consumers in the untenable position of either paying twice for the same service or forgoing Internet access altogether."
Marriott issued the following statement Friday afternoon defending its actions:
"Marriott has a strong interest in ensuring that when our guests use our Wi-Fi service, they will be protected from rogue wireless hot spots that can cause degraded service, insidious cyber-attacks and identity theft," the statement said. "Like many other institutions and companies in a wide variety of industries, including hospitals and universities, the Gaylord Opryland protected its Wi-Fi network by using FCC-authorized equipment provided by well-known, reputable manufacturers.
"We believe that the Opryland's actions were lawful. We will continue to encourage the FCC to pursue a rulemaking in order to eliminate the ongoing confusion resulting from today's action and to assess the merits of its underlying policy."
In March 2013, the FCC received a complaint from someone who had attended an event at the Gaylord Opryland and claimed the hotel was "jamming mobile hot spots so that you can't use them in the convention space," the FCC statement said.
Blocking a traveler's personal Wi-Fi will only serve to aggravate hotel guests further, said Benet Wilson, who blogs about travel at AviationQueen.com.
"Travelers are already annoyed that higher-end hotels continue to charge for subpar Wi-Fi, which is why they bring their own," Wilson told CNN.
"So it's really galling when you hear of a company like Marriott, which has a good reputation that does something that causes a major inconvenience to its customers. And the fact that they profited off of their customers in such a blatant way also doesn't help."
Marriott and its brands operate more than 3,000 hotels in the United States, according to the company's website.
Kimbroix on September 26th, 2018 at 13:09 UTC »
What sucks about fines like this is that The Marriott probably made more than $600k.
FurryPornAccount on September 26th, 2018 at 12:47 UTC »
And I bet they made way more in wifi fees than they payed in fines
calculman3829 on September 26th, 2018 at 12:22 UTC »
For those looking to understand the tech, Marriott was basically using a 3rd party device to find other Wi-Fi devices and send deauth (deauthentication) packets, which disconnect a user from a network because the protocol thinks there's been a De-Authentication event. So the laptop or something else would just disconnect from the Wi-Fi hotspot.
This is pretty much a standard packet that's used in other scenarios and there's not much you can do to it (short of modifying the WLAN stack). It's used in attacks as well when you're trying to crack keys.
These packets can be easily sniffed, so it would not have been too hard to see that another device was sending these deauth packets. You will get caught if people figure out their connection is good and there's no other reason to have this happen.
Shitty on Marriott's part, but that Wi-Fi is a cash boon for them, never mind that interfering with communications is a Federal Law violation. Anyone else would have likely been fined and arrested.
It's a much better approach than indiscriminate jamming, since Jamming is even more illegal and can interfere with many other devices.
Edit: As many have pointed out, it was likely performed by the Access Points themselves, not a separate device.