I was driving home from work yesterday and heard a feature on the radio about unsecured wireless access points in homes. It followed the arrest of two people who had been using someone else’s broadband via a wireless connection.
I talk to lots of people through work and you would not believe the amount of people who dont secure their wireless access at home.
When i ask why, i do get some very strange responses but one of my favourites is
“What harm would it do if someone did use it?”
They think it’s all about hackers and breaking into websites and stealing credit card numbers and their quiet little street doesn’t need to worry about that.
While i could give them a hundred reasons i always explain that if someone downloaded “questionable material of an adult nature” from the Internet who will the police be talking to first?
At that point they usually go pale and mutter something about sorting it out as soon as they get home
Would you leave your keys in your car? If your neighbour was tapping your electricty supply would you be angry at that?
Again there are tons of comparable examples i could give.
Setting up security isn’t hard on most modern wireless routers. The instructions usually give a step-by-step guide. Even using WEP would be better than none at all!
Take a few mintues tonight to make sure your wireless connection is secure. If not speak to a geek who can 🙂
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From my house, I can see three other unsecured wireless networks. At work, I can pick up another two. Once, I left Ministumbler running on my PDA (I’d been using it to test wireless coverage at work) on my drive home. It picked up more than 40 networks, with only 4 or 5 being secure – and two of them were mine and work’s!
Hi DeKay
I actually subscribe to your blog..thanks for the comment
The wireless issue is amazing isn’t it?! What’s even more scary is that there are businesses out they in similar positions
Thanks, always good posts on your blog!