And just saying “it wasn’t me, officer, there must be some mistake” isn’t going to stop them taking away your computers/cameras/camcorders/photo albums etc for analysis. Fair enough, they won’t find anything untoward on your computers (at least you hope they won’t find anything), but you’ll still have to explain to the wife and kids where the computers have gone.

Of course porn is only one example - your wide open bandwidth could just as easily be used to plot a terrorist attack.

You may say this is a worst case scenario, but if someone’s up to no good, you can bet they won’t think twice about stealing someone else’s bandwidth to cover their tracks.

If Adrian’s neighbour is actually being generous with his bandwidth, do you think he’ll be just as generous with his car? I wonder if he leaves that unlocked, or if he minds someone taking it and driving a couple of hundred miles (even if that person does bring the car back afterwards, it’s still got an extra 200 miles on the clock, and half a tank of fuel missing)

Sorry, but if you leave your wireless unencrypted, it’s the same as leaving your house or car unlocked, in my opinion, and you deserve whatever you get.

Maybe you’ve already read that report, and I can still think of reasons why I might need an open network. When I set up network for clients, I do try to encourage some form of encryption.

I understand where you are coming from, but I’m doing a degree in Computer Science with Information Security. I know how easy it is these days to set up an encryption on a wireless network (every Wi-Fi Certified device now has to have WPA2)

This is an age that is increasingly dependent on digital information. Insecure networks are akin to wearing a T-Shirt with your bank details, passwords, credit card numbers etc, on it.

Trust me when I say that encrypting wireless networks is very easy. If you don’t know how to do it there will be tutorials online, or you can easily hire someone to set it up for you.

Your same logic would really apply to all WEP encryption users as well - since anyone with the know-how to watch traffic on a line and pick out important data more than likely has the ability to crack WEP easily enough.

Also, banking sites and any sites that require important information are SSL encrypted regardless, so it’s not exactly the easiest endeavor (and not worth a criminal’s time, at today’s rate) to try and crack your SSL connection just so he could get your CC number or other important info.

In my opinion, it’s just not a big deal for your home network, and you’re better off spending your time securing your individual computers.

I only say that from personal experience. Possibly due to a cheap router or poor positioning or excessive haste in setup, initially we had a lot of trouble getting a wireless network up and running at home. So when eventually it did, I left it untouched for a while. Unsecure, but my laptop still only saw one or two other very weak other signals, and I feared messing with the configuration in case I messed up my own connection, which incidentally didn’t seem affected by neighbours. Eventually (much later) I have got round to adding encryption, but on this PC at least it was not as easy and intuitive as you imply.