Unprotected Wireless Lans?

[y0himba]

I drove 1700 miles from PA to OK to visit my folks. Had the laptop plugged into my Minvan's power port (formerly known as a "lighter").  I passed metro areas in PA, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Oklahoma.  I was able to be online on an unsecured network within 20 miles, sometimes more, of each city.  Not to mention hotels out in the middle of nowhere providing me with unsecured wireless.  The funny part is, the hotel we stayed at said that it had high speed wireless, but did not.  Luckily the other hotels close had wireless 

When I reached Oklahoma, at my parent's house, I was able to connect to 4 unsecured wireless networks, and see 3 secured on top of that in thier neighborhood.  When my dad saw me walking around the house with my laptop using remote desktop to log in here, he though that was just the niftiest thing since peanut butter, so he went out, bought a toshiba laptop, a Linksys wireless router, and 2 pci network cards for his 2 desktops, and had me set it up.  Yes, I secured it.

[jgpaiva]

the hotel we stayed at said that it had high speed wireless, but did not.  Luckily the other hotels close had wireless 

Maybe that's the high speed wireless they mentioned.

[y0himba]

[housetier]

German users of WLANs should take measure to protect it as they are now held responsible for any "bad things that happened" if they do not protect their WLAN.

So if your neighbour uses your unprotected WLAN to offer software illegally, YOU can be held responsible as accomplice. Strange but true.

Note this was a court ruling in Germany and does not apply to other countries.

[f0dder]

Nasty! - and not at all fair. Some access points cannot be secured, others only have WEP (which is basically insecure), and many people don't have the tech skills required to secure the access point... bad court, bad!