Re: A night in the cells - for using the 'wrong' wifi!

On 13 May, 13:43, Cynic <cynic_...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Wed, 13 May 2009 13:27:03 +0100, "The Todal" <deadmail...@xxxxxxxx>
wrote:

 If you are able to get access to a network in your
street, you know - surely - that you are taking advantage of a customer who
doesn't know how to secure his network and isn't aware that anyone is
accessing his system and that they might also have an opportunity to read
his private documents on his computer.

Or you are taking advantage of someone such as myself who does not
mind other people using their WiFi connection.  I have unlimited
bandwidth, so it is no skin off my nose if other people make use of
what I'm paying for anyway.  If they suck off too much bandwidth that
I don't get an adequate speed when I want to use it, or I get
complaints from my ISP that my connection is being used for spam or
similar (which happened once), I can simply switch off my WiFi.

IMO it *is* reasonable these days to believe that an unsecured WiFi
has been deliberately set up that way to allow anyone to use it.
Routers have been shipped for some time with the WiFi encrypted as
default, and the instructions make it clear what the purpose of that
is.

Besides which, many laptops will simply connect to the strongest
signal without the user knowing *where* they are getting their
Internet connection from.  My friend's wife once complained that their
wireless Internet was not very good and kept dropping out.  When I
examined the setting of their router, I discovered that their WiFi had
been turned off!  Goodness knows where her laptop had been connecting
to!

Where I work, there are 15 WiFi routers picked up by Windows ... by
default, Vista was quite happy to connect my laptop to someone elses
unsecured one, in preference to my secured office one. The only way I
could tell was being unable to access shared files on our server ....

.