said by jonnyb :

and stop worrying about the theft of some wireless internet when that could be prevented by some simple precautions ...

said by jonnyb :

and stop worrying about the theft of some wireless internet when that could be prevented by some simple precautions, and to put someone in jail for it is an absolutely ridiculous waste of tax dollars.

said by TScheisskopf :

The clincher was some of this ride was through an Embarq-serviced area and a number of folks were using the Embarq-provided 2Wire wireless/modem. I am very familiar with that one. WPA/PSK is in there and easy to use. Still, WEP is all you see, except in a miniscule amount of cases.

said by pnh102 :

I wonder how prevalent open wifi is in residential areas anymore. When I moved to a new apartment in July of 2003, I was able to bum wifi from someone in the complex until I got my own Comcast hookup.

However, I noticed that as time went on (and 2 residences later), I could see more wireless access points, but they were secured by one mechanism or another. Maybe more people are getting with the program?

said by TScheisskopf :

I had my laptop with me and I was running Stumbler. The shear number of unsecured access points, as well as access points crying out for hackage, because they were using WEP, was staggering.

said by TScheisskopf :

WEP, of course. Know that any kid with 5-15 minutes and an easily-obtainable, brute force WEP cracking tool could get into that access point.

You buys yer' ticket and you takes yer' chances.

said by TK Junk Mail :

It would help if ALL brands of wireless APs for sale made it impossible to work unless security was 1st turned on. Maybe then security would be used.

said by b10010011 :

I have a few devices in my house that only have 128 bit WEP as their highest security level, my PDA and my kid's Nintendo DS and an old laptop with an Orinoco gold card.

So what would you suggest, WEP, open, or no internet access for these devices?

said by pnh102 :

I just used an access point that had MAC address filtering. I configured it to allow access only to devices whose MAC addresses I specify. It is a moderately effective, device-agnostic way of providing security.

I understand though that if someone really wanted to, they could use a tool like Kismet to sniff out the MAC address of any device communicating to my AP, clone it, and break into my network, but I still think the percentage of these individuals versus the number of people looking for a "quick score" is small enough for me to not worry about it.

said by TScheisskopf :

Two reasons: establishing a connection from a moving bus is not exactly optimal ...