Some 12% of Consumers 'Borrow' Unsecured Wi-Fi 469
alphadogg writes "Despite the fact that it's often considered an illegal act, a sizeable percentage of the UK/US internet-using population 'borrows' unsecured Wi-Fi access. This is according to a study conducted by the group Accenture. 'The Accenture study found that computer users are still engaging in some unsafe computing practices. Nearly half of all respondents said that they used the same password for all of their online accounts, and only a quarter of them have ever encrypted files on their computers.'" My guess is the actual figure is higher than that.
And why is this bad? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, it's sent unencrypted - just like network traffic over those old-fashioned things called wires. We all know to use https and ssh for secure connections anyway.
no differentiation- regular or intermittent? (Score:4, Interesting)
Higher figure? (Score:2, Interesting)
Personally I would guess that the result is much lower than in the study. None of my acquaintances have ever piggy-backed wi-fi, and that includes cosc (Computer Science) students, software engineers in the industry and of course plenty of people that know nothing about computers. At the same time only one person I know encrypts any hard-drive data (no not me).
I don't see why piggy-backing wi-fi is illegal, after all if someone leaves their gate open, they shouldn't be surprised if someone else walks through. (Note: If you misuse the network to steal data of your host, the stealing should obviously still be illegal)
Re:news.. (Score:1, Interesting)
MORE than half use the same password... (Score:4, Interesting)
But you get permission every time (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Gotta Remember, They're Users (Score:2, Interesting)
and this is a problem because? (Score:2, Interesting)
if you dont want your community to use your wireless, but you want the ease of unsecured access, use mac address filtering on your wireless router. most all 802.11b/g/n integrated service routers come with that feature in an easy to use package. if you CBA to keep people off your network, it WILL be used.
it makes it a bit harder to add devices to the network, but once again, tis still easy.
i keep mine unsecured simply so that if there is ever a disaster in the area, the cisco NERV (i got to tour it the other day, was awesome) can override it and add it to the disaster mesh. i think of it as community service.
http://blogs.cisco.com/news/2007/11/video_ciscos_network_emergency.html [cisco.com]Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:And why is this bad? (Score:1, Interesting)
IShareWiFi (Score:1, Interesting)
In an apartment. (Score:5, Interesting)
The other premise upon which people base a lot of paranoia regarding network and personal computer security is the assumption that they possess something worth stealing. There are many effective credit card fraud methods in use that don't require any sort of computer exploitation, but rather involve "social engineering." What other information does the average person have on his PC that is of value? Of course I would be disturbed if somebody managed to obtain my entire photograph library, but that is of so little value to somebody else, I doubt very much that any significant effort would be put towards obtaining it.
Re:And why is this bad? (Score:3, Interesting)
No open networks around me (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:And why is this bad? (Score:2, Interesting)
For fun (Score:3, Interesting)
Nearly half of all respondents said that they used (Score:4, Interesting)
Like newspaper registrations? Rather than bother with bugmenot, I just register using bogus data. My password is 111111. Because I really don't give a shit about a newspaper registration. It has nothing whatever to do with security. The Chicago Tribune has no CC#s, SS#s or any other real, personally identifiable information about me; I don't even know why they bother.
Yet this is somehow deemed a "Security risk." And I don't send encrypted data; if it's sensitive information I'll send it snail mail.
Re:news.. (Score:2, Interesting)
And don't paint it just like every other car... (Score:5, Interesting)
I set my parents house up with secured wifi 3 years ago... Last year my parents got a new laptop, and went about using wifi. 6 months pass. They get a new printer... I tell them that they can print from their laptop, over the network, and try to talk my dad through setting it up... After much confusion, I realize they are not on the wifi network that I set up for them, but one of their neigbhors...
My parents are smart, they just didn't grow up using computers, and don't think about the kind of things that most slashdot users think about... typical boomers... I bet 12% (or more) of laptop users steal wifi, without even knowing it...
Re:Gotta Remember, They're Users (Score:4, Interesting)
(My laptop has WinXP on it, but it's an older laptop - 4 years - and it uses Atheros software to connect and only attempts to connect to the network I activate. Under Linux, my usual OS, I set up a script for it to connect to the SSID I specify.)
Plus, people do use others access points intentionally - some friends of mine were doing it over the weekend when we were camping at a spot that didn't have any internet access.
Redundancy/Backup Access (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:And don't paint it just like every other car... (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know how hard it would be to spoof my wireless and fool my laptop to connect to a malicious network, but no regular neighbor is going to try to do that.
But my laptop will not try to join any other networks than the ones I have already configured. My access point will not allow other computers on as it is locked by MAC address and computer name to who it allows on as well as using WPA2 with a hard password.
Another perspective (Score:1, Interesting)
So how is it stealing if someone is aware that their wireless is unsecured and want to allow guests to access it? Of that 12%, at least 50% of the host networks likely fall into this category.
On the same note, despite repeated calls to the cable company I find that my cable modem goes down quite a bit, but my neighbor's doesn't because they never buried their cable...its an eyesore that runs down the side of my property. So given that I'm paying for the internet service, but its unavailable, and that my neighbor purposely runs an unsecured wireless access point on the same cable network, where is the crime exactly?
The future of free Wifi: itsatrap (Score:2, Interesting)
I can see it now:
2010, 6 months after the Thou Shalt Not Steal Wifi Act of 2009 went into effect.
Joe Victim complains he's a victim of identity theft.
The police investigate and find he's regularly steals WiFi from his friends and neighbors. One of his neighbors' network got taken over by the Russian mob. He goes to jail for WiFi theft and his neighbor goes to jail for not taking adquate steps to protect his network.
It makes the news.
A month later, throughout the country, people start getting blackmail letters from the Russian Mob saying "We just emptied your bank account. If you go to the police you will go to jail just like Joe Victim a month ago. Have a nice day."
timely article (Score:2, Interesting)