W-Fi icon.
Do people get what they deserve if they leave their Wi-Fi network unsecured?
Would you feel sorry for someone who had their car stolen, if you discovered they’d left their keys in the ignition and the doors unlocked? What if their house was robbed after they went on holidays and left the front door wide open? Leaving your home Wi-Fi network unprotected is just as stupid, yet people still do it.
If you’ve got a Wi-Fi network, at home or at work, it’s essential to secure it by enabling WPA encryption and setting a password. Firstly you’re protecting yourself against leeches looking for free bandwidth, who could leave you with a throttled connection or a hefty excess data bill. You’re also guarding yourself against people using your network to do dodgy things while letting you take the blame. It’s still possible to hack into a secure network, but few people would bother unless they’re really out to get you like the neighbour from hell.
People seem to be learning about Wi-Fi security. I remember a time when everyone I knew had an open Wi-Fi network near their home, but they’re becoming harder to find. It’s partly due to user education and partly due to the fact that more vendors now ship their wireless gear secured by default. If people would just Read The Frickin’ Manual they’d see how easy it is to enable password protection. A few years ago one of the major Wi-Fi hardware vendors told me they had to sell their gear unsecured because they couldn’t afford to handle all the support calls from dopey customers who couldn’t connect to their new wireless point. This sounds a little cold but I can see their point.
Despite all the warnings, open Wi-Fi networks are still out there and it doesn’t take very long to find one if you go war-driving at night. Even if just one or two percent of networks are unsecured, as found in this SMH Online story, that still equates to tens of thousands of open networks across Australia. Should we feel sorry for these people? It's not that hard to enable encryption, even if you're a newbie. I might sound like a tech-savvy snob, but surely if you buy any new product or service - from a sports car to a smartphone - it's your responsibility to learn how to use it safely.
The German courts have inflicted 100 euro fines on people who failed to secure their Wi-Fi networks, after open networks were used to download pirated music. While I’m generally not a fan of the nanny state, this might not be a bad idea. What do you think, should we protect people from their own stupidity?