Two French cities were offline for several nights after a parent’s misguided attempt to restrict their children’s internet usage, according to local reports. Residents of Messanges and a neighboring town in southwest France lost access to the internet and telephone signal from midnight to 3 am on several days when an unidentified man used a signal jammer, the newspaper France Bleu reported.
The unidentified man faces a €30,000 fine and up to six months in prison if found guilty of causing the mass disruption.
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A mobile phone operator was first alerted to the problem when one of its antennas stopped working at Messanges. A technician from the Agence Nationale des Fréquences (ANFR) went to the scene with equipment to detect where the interruption was coming from.
Using a handheld scanner, the technician discovered hostile waves coming from a house, where a man allegedly admitted to using a jamming device to prevent his children from using the internet late at night.
The alleged culprit believed he was just blocking his home’s Wi-Fi and phone signal, although the ANFR cautioned that these devices often have a “wider range” of impact than vendors typically advertise. They work by emitting a powerful signal on the same frequency as a phone or WiFi carrier, preventing devices from receiving the intended signal.
An incident report posted on the ANFR website noted that the suspect’s children “have become addicted to social media and other apps” since the restrictions imposed during the pandemic. “After consulting forums on the internet, the father decided that a blocker was the best solution to end these excesses”, says the report.
“A radical solution, but above all illegal and disproportionate. The equipment not only blocked his house, but also his neighbors, the inhabitants of his city and the inhabitants of the neighboring city”.
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