Stealing wifi in the UK is a criminal offence. It's covered by one of the telephony laws. People have been prosecuted for doing it.

http://www.engadget.com/2005/07/22/u...n-wifi-signal/

"Is YOUR HotSpot open?"

Not for you, big boy. Maybe after a few more drinks.

People have been prosecuted in the U.S. as well, but that doesn't stop people from doing it. What if it is meant as free public wifi? And if someone doesn't know what they are doing and leave their wifi unsecured, I would say it is their own fault for making themselves vulnerable in the first place.

I don't get it. What is WiFi "stealing"? If I intentionaly open my AP (and I did it) are the strangers still "stealing" my internet? If I go to the nearby cafe and use it's connection is this "stealing" again?
And about somebody doing illegal stuff with an open connection: let's say I leave my car unlocked with the keys inside. Somebody comes, starts the car and then knocks down 3 pedestrians. Is this my faut leaving the car open or is the guy, for knocking the pedestrians?
And most of it, as it is already stated in the article if somebody is to do something really bad WPA won't stop him.

I run two Fon Hotspots (read THIS and go HERE). What would be perfect for the Internet Tablet users but a) NITs and Fonera have incompatible chipsets b) NITs are not on the Hungarian market so there are only a few NIT users here

My AP is closed (WPA+MAC filtering)...I really don't want to have issues with any illegal activity that may go through my connection...better safe than sorry I guess

We've gone around and around here on the subject. As far as the law is concerned, it's generally incumbent upon the person desiring access to determine status. Odds are points named "hpsetup" or the like are not intended for free consumption, whereas one named "Free wifi for everyone!" just might be.

I opened mine up for a while for some troubleshooting. While I was configuring a new PC for my son, I saw JOHN_PC on my network. Silly guy. Just took a few seconds to deprive him of his free ride.

I don't see that as a "good" explanation. His rationale works for him, fine-- but that doesn't make it universal.

His argument about RIAA lawsuits and asteroids is not only mathematically incorrect, it's fatally flawed. Forget how far off his risk assessment is (others explained that on the Wired page), he leaves out impact. Yes, odds are low I'd be implicated in media file stealing... but the impact if I am is high. Thus an easy risk/reward analysis says it ain't worth it for that reason alone.

He also glosses over bandwidth division. If your neighbors start sucking up large amounts of your paid bandwidth, you're losing out. I'd love to be able to keep my wifi open but I'm not funding big bittorrent operations.

- i appreciate Apple providing open WiFi at all of its stores across the U.S.... it was nice to sit and catch up on the news using my n800 while the wife unit shopped around the mall (not my favorite thing to do)...

(and i was sitting on the lower level below the Apple store - only 15% sig, but it worked just fine!)

Too many lawyers with nothing to do constructive to civilization and too many bills to consider it anyway :-).

wep and mac filtering. Can't get wpa to work on the old wg511 card.

Could leave it wide open as it is on the lan and I have yet to see a wireless router that could properly specify a gateway unless it was cabled in on the WAN port (so I hear).

as in:

Server -- LAN --- switch-----+----- rest of network
| +----- wireless router
+-- WAN

Apparently if the wireless router goes between the cable modem and server WAN port it works right. Apparently no matter what is set the wireless router will give itself as the gateway (dead end).

Yeah, rather perplexed been messing with this off and on for months.

Since I am on a UPS here I would not mind opening it up when there are power failures in the neighborhood.

Never a dull moment.