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Nebraska Sheriff Wardriving, Sending Letters About Unsecured Wi-Fi
An anonymous reader sends this quote from JournalStar.com:
"The Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office has seen an increase in scammers using unsecured Wi-Fi connections to steal identities and mask their crimes during the past six months, Sheriff Terry Wagner said. ... So deputies spent the past few weeks finding unsecure connections and sending 40 to 50 letters to let people know about the potential dangers of strangers accessing their network connections. 'You're just opening yourself up for a series of potential pitfalls,' Chief Deputy Jeff Bliemeister said. ... Bliemeister said only businesses like coffee shops that offer Internet connections to customers need unsecured Internet connections.
Applause!
Much better than that goofball sheriff in Aridzona.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
In a dense area you might pick up 15 different access points, 2-3 of them open. Unless they have sophisticated RF locating equipment the letters are just going to be out based on a best guess scenario.
The only place I can see this working is suburbs with wide spacing between homes, or rural areas.
However, the ISP's TOS forbids it. Nobody's going to break into the computer unless it has no password. But as I've gotten free wifi from unsecured hotspots, I see no reason not to repay by doing the same.
Free Martian Whores!
Are there many cities (I mean, real ones, not "A disparate group of buildings, divided by excessive zoning, spread over a wide area, connected legally purely for political organizational, and taxation purposes" Anytown USA type places) in Nebraska? I always thought it was mostly rural.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
While I think this action is quite cool, I would argue that not even coffee shops and businesses like that need open wireless connections.
They could just as well make the WPA2 key easy to remember and put it in some obvious place, enabling their clients to use encrypted connections and avoid all that Firesheep stuff as well.
2 deputies with directional antennas.
If you can find warships that way, you can find wifi hotspots.
You've never been to Nebraska, have you? Google says the population of Lincoln is about 260,000 total. There are apartment complexes in Los Angeles with nearly that many people. Houses have yards, there aren't many multi-story buildings (especially residential). The only "sophisticated RF locating equipment" is the number of bars on the signal idicator in the system tray in Windows, which will vary visible from one house to the next.
Other Law Enforcement please take note. Follow this model for other crime prevention and imporve your community.
Thank You
Taxpayers
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
What's with slashdot today? An earlier story gave a bogus link and this gives none at all. I tried to find it by googling wifi sheriff site:JournalStar.com but the story didn't come up. Is this for real?
Free Martian Whores!
well said!
fak3r.com
How about some id on each wireless access point, which can be tracked through the service providers in the region? Doesn't sound unreasonable, particularly if law enforcement is provided with the necessary tools and training.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Their guns give them the right to do what they want. These actions are designed to prevent ad hoc networks that are outside 'authorized channels' from springing up.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
If it is legal and not unreasonably dangerous for a business to use an open wifi connection, then why can't I?
You can. This sheriff isn't arresting people for having hotspots, he's simply mailing them FUD.
Free Martian Whores!
I don't see anything in the article that said it was illegal to have open wifi, or that you couldn't.
It said that open wifi was being used for identity theft, and that notices of potential dangers (I'd imagine such as possible repercussions for the wifi owner if fraud is traced back to their internet connection) were sent out.
For a couple of older folks or just generally non-technical people who potentially just plugged in an unsecured D-link, not a terrible thing to be given information about, and somewhat pro-active of the Sheriff. It seems little different from the notices given to people who leave their cars unlocked in neighbourhoods experiencing an increase of car thefts...
Google says the population of Lincoln is about 260,000 total. There are apartment complexes in Los Angeles with nearly that many people.
There are conversion vans in Los Angeles with that many Mexicans in them
You (and they) can. This office just sent a letter detailing the potential risk.
In a dense area...
We're talking about Nebraska here.
The only 'danger' you expose yourself to by keeping an open wifi is that a moronic lawyer claims it must have been you and decides to sue you for things you didn't do.
Or if a moronic judge issues a search warrant for your home.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I have the right to keep an open WIFI connection and if someone else uses it for bad purposes that does NOT expose me to any reasonable danger or risk.
It does make you the initial point of contact/suspicion until they (maybe) figure out it wasn't you. But by then, your PC's have been confiscated, your name in the news, and possibly dragged through the courts.
I get your point, but if someone does use your open connection for illegal purposes, you are where the investigation will start.
There are some very dense areas in Nebraska. Some of them are even well populated.
They are not mandating you close your wifi, they are just suggesting you do. Making you aware of something you were unsure of maybe. Very much the same as if they were to wring your door bell to tell you your garage door is open at midnight, etc.
so how is this any different than when people went ballistic over google's streetview cars logging wifi?
Not that I'm saying there should be anything wrong with it in the first place, but why are the freaks that tried to go after google for doing this going to leave this guy alone? Looks like about the same thing to me.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
It's not strictly FUD. For people who leave an AP open because they don't know better, this is a good service. For people who leave a WAP open because of some kind of principled and conscentious decsion, there's nothing there they're not already familiar with and willing to risk.
And let's face it. There is risk. If some random bad actor uses your unsecured WAP for random badness, it will inconvenience you. You will be a "person of interest" until they find a better suspect. Again, this might be a risk worth taking if you decide it is, but for a clueless schlub who just bought the router and plugged it in? Not so much.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
If it is legal and not unreasonably dangerous for a business to use an open wifi connection, then why can't I? If I get incorporated, does that make it safe?
No, but there's a general presumption that it's intentional when a business does it and that they understand the risks and decided to accept them. There's a (well justified) presumption that when a random house has an open AP called "Linksys" it's an accidental result of cluelessness. The sheriff isn't shutting peoples' netowrks down or threatening them with any sort of law enforcement action, they're just informing people that it's a security risk.
The only 'danger' you expose yourself to by keeping an open wifi is that a moronic lawyer claims it must have been you and decides to sue you for things you didn't do. The proper response to that is to counter sue the lawyer and to educate the public, judges and jury that an IP address does not prove identity. I have the right to keep an open WIFI connection and if someone else uses it for bad purposes that does NOT expose me to any reasonable danger or risk. People have the right to anonymity and that means government and lawyers do not have the right to intimidate people into making anonymity harder to obtain.
If you want to play lawyer for yourself without being one, consulting with one, or actually studying the law, you're welcome to do so. But the legal system is no place for the blindfold-and-shotgun approach.
1: Lawyers sue people on behalf of clients, not on their own. It's some other party (like a copyright holder, perhaps) that would be suing you. They are the party initiating the action, and it's up to them to decide whether to spend their hard earned money on the expensive process of suing you for something that may or may not be stupid. Their attorney may or may not be a moron or a dick, but it always takes a moronic/dick client to generate a moronic/dick lawsuit.
2: Countersuing the other party's lawyer is a good way to rapidly generate a large judgment for the other lawyer's fees, which you will have to pay if you initiate such a misguided action.
3: You may be contractually liable for other peoples' use of your open network in some circumstances. If the terms of service for your ISP so state, and the cause of action arises in a way that those terms are relevant, you could find yourself in a bad position. And while IP addresses are not proof of identity, they are evidence, and it would put you in a compromised defensive position to have your IP associated with "bad stuff".
4: The implied right of anonymous speech within the 1st Amendment is not relevant to any issues at play here. There's a misinterpretation of something going on if that seems important in this context.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
The only place I can see this working is suburbs with wide spacing between homes, or rural areas.
Or Nebraska.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
There is 1 city in that county, and it ain't exactly NYC.
Well, there's only 1/5th of one city in New York County. :o)
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln's general student wireless network (UNL-AIR) is wide open and unencrypted. The only form of security in place is a MAC access list. I'm pretty sure somebody wardriving around the campus (or "warsitting" in the middle of the damn student union) could collect all sorts of yummy private data from that network each and every day.
So, will the University be getting a letter from the Lancaster sheriff? Probably not. Should they change it anyway? Hell yes.
Wifi encryption is useless if anyone and everyone can join the network. Once you join, it's just like being on any other shared medium network. All your packets are available in the clear. If you're worried about security, use application level encryption.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
As a Nebraskan... yes.
I'm regularly shocked by perceptions people from the larger cities, or from the coasts have. Yes, by land area, Nebraska is mostly rural, but it does have cities that typically have malls, movie theaters, and at least 10 square miles of urban/suburban space.
Lancaster County, in particular, averages 311 people/sq mi, and has Lincoln in the center, which even has some buildings with more than one story. Evidence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lincoln_DT.jpg
We in NY feel your pain, but in reverse. A chunk of NY larger than several nearby states is designated "Forever Wild" and is the largest state park in the Lower 48. Several townships near where I grew up measure population density in fractions of a person per square mile.
Sure you've got the right to it NOW. How soon before a "sponsored" law gets submitted making it illegal to leave your wifi open... you know, "to protect the children"?....
Its a choice, not a law. The police needs to stick to enforcing the law, which is their job.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I was living up in Ottawa, and it was quicker/easier to cross the border down into the Adirondacks than to drive up to Algonquin park. Fewer people, fewer fees, less traffic. I'm surprised more people don't do it.
Others have already explained why you can, so I'll explain why you shouldn't
So go ahead, keep that connection open, just don't post a "The police are harrassing me" bitch-fest ask-slashdot story when it bites you in the ass as you will get NO simpathy from me or the majority of the readers here.
It's so easy to bust down your door, run into your house, and grab your big-screen TV, so why don't you just leave your door unlocked so I can walk right in?
Also, since it's so easy to smash your car's windows, hotwire it, and drive away, why don't you just leave your car unlocked and set your keys in the cupholder?
If the SSID is broadcasting, "Smith" and the name on the mailbox is "Smith", you can probably take a guess about it.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
In my area DSL isn't available and FIOS or broadband is upward of $70. This affects me and many others who have difficulty with such prices. The act of intimidating people with open APs is ludicrous and shit-brained. A secured router with a unique user-ID, strong password, along with various options such as filters, availability-configurations, etc., is more secure than WEP with default settings. This sheriff should have a router fastened to his head until the microwaves loosen the rocks. I think the EFF elaborated on this topic quite well, also mentioning Schneier and his views on the subject.
Sharing, especially of educational/informational resources is a good thing. Intimidating people into doing otherwise against their will is encouraging greed, inefficiency and paranoia.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
Open wifi isn't a problem if you always use https to connect to websites. https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere is an easy way to use https if it's available for a website.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
A federal grand jury wouldn't return an indictment.
http://wifinetnews.com/archives/2006/11/fcc_smacks_down_boston-logans_dubious_wi-fi_claims.html
WPA2 isn't at all easy to crack, but it's definitely easy to spoof MAC addresses.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
For someone up to no good, I'm not sure that securing WiFi is smart move.
If someone has an open wifi, and something illegal (copyrighted content, kiddie porn, etc.) is downloaded via his IP, the person has plausible deniability that he himself did the downloading.
If that persons has secured his WiFi with a password, then I would think he's more likely to get convicted.
just from my house there is a open hotspot 2 wpa ones and 3 wep ones lol. wpa takes more time to crack then wep being it still needs the password brute forced.at least where i work they must have a smart admin working all there buildings everything is wpa2. but walk across the parking lot to the residential area bam open hotspots all over the block. point is the problem is far worse then you think, most wifi spots are wep or open,
The vast majority of people with open APs at home don't know what the fuck they are doing.
A coffee shop has some business interest in maintaining open access to wifi. Perhaps the assumption is that there is some chance of them hiring someone who can configure a basic firewall+AP properly. I'm not particularly optimistic about that, but let the Sheriff solve one problem at a time.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
If the SSID is broadcasting, "Smith" and the name on the mailbox is "Smith", you can probably take a guess about it.
I think if you're a residential broadband customer, and your access point is wide open, the SSID is gonna be "Linksys" or other default name.
I am not a crackpot.
I just left AZ a bit over a year ago and lived in Maricopa County. Joe Arpaio started his b.s. first, but even before that he and his office were a menace to the Latino populace of the county. Don't get me wrong, there ARE illegals there, no one will ever dispute that claim, however he's been less than truthful when he repeatedly states that they're responsible for all the crime there. Take a look at the mugshots his office posts daily, plenty of black and white faces to go along with the brown ones he singles out.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
I strongly disagree in cases where WPA is properly configured. It is simply insane to try to crack a strong WPA2 setup for any average or even above-average person. Also, the MAC can be duplicated by the attacker and used during times when the owner is not active -- it can also cause problems. On the rest, I concur. A good router -- especially with good firmware -- can be intricately configured and offer quite a bit of basic security. Aggressively discouraging people from maintaining open APs is stupid and should be punishable in itself.
The amount of people out there looking at putrid content or committing crimes is small. If all aspects of our lives are to be re-arranged in response to the lowest common denominator, we will follow suit. If this sheriff had sent out passive, informative educational material to people, I would commend him/her. Stupid indeed.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
It's not strictly FUD. For people who leave an AP open because they don't know better, this is a good service. For people who leave a WAP open because of some kind of principled and conscentious decsion, there's nothing there they're not already familiar with and willing to risk.
And let's face it. There is risk. If some random bad actor uses your unsecured WAP for random badness, it will inconvenience you. You will be a "person of interest" until they find a better suspect. Again, this might be a risk worth taking if you decide it is, but for a clueless schlub who just bought the router and plugged it in? Not so much.
Agreed, it's not FUD - the majority of people with open Wifi access points don't know and and don't know why it's bad. Those that leave their AP open on purpose will read the letter and ignore it. I used to keep a guest Wifi connection open, bandwidth constrained to less than 1mbit with port 25 blocked outbound. I saw a few dozen MAC addresses on it, so I think it was useful to some people.
Hopefully the letter included some online resources and companies that those AP owners could use to secure their Wifi it's likely that many of those with an open AP don't have any idea how to secure it.
When I moved into my last apartment, before I had set up internet service I found that a neighbor (no idea who, I could see dozens of SSIDs) had left their Wifi open, so I used it. It was a little flaky, kept dropping my VPN connections so I wished I could reboot it. He had left the default password on it, so it was trivial to log in and reboot it (and it behaved a lot better after that!)
I'm pretty sure that what I did was illegal, but do you really think that my neighbor purposely left his access point wide open and able to be reconfigured by pretty much anyone who wanted to?
I had the same thing happen in my home county. Our jail was under federal oversight for over 13 years due to constant escapes, inmate injury, and general code violations. We had a sheriff who hired a known thug deputy to be an assistant warden. The man hired numerous thugs for guards, and gave a good old boy system "wink, wink" to the guards who "beat the inmates who needed it."
This entire reign of terror ended after an inmate was beaten to death while in the restraint chair. The video showed the man get slammed into the chair, strapped in, pepper sprayed, and hooded with the spit hood. Then each inmate proceeded to either punch/kick, strike with a baton, or use a tazer on the poor victim. The coroner determined what happened and the federal justice department filed criminal charges against a bunch of "officers." I believe 18 of them either resigned, plead guilty, or plea bargained to lesser charges. Only one or two were convicted of the worst charges, and they happened to be the ringleaders. The only lack of justice is that the assistant warden was never charged, he did end up resigning and no longer works in law enforcement. This entire debacle cost the sitting sheriff his seat in the next election.
The man who took his place almost immediately increased the pay for guards, increased hiring standards, and began the process of fixing all of the code violations that had been ignored for years. The county commission thought he was "spending too much money" and fought him non stop. Apparently they don't think anything of having the justice department look over your shoulder for years. I only hope that the sheriff gets re-elected and can continue to fix the problems in the county. I do not want the county to look like "Sheriff Joe" and his "tent city."
Should anyone want to read what happened, the events in question were from Harrison County Mississippi, during February 2006. The sheriffs name was George Payne. I do know it is against the rules to read the article/story/research/etc. but it is an interesting read.
And if they commit crimes while logging into your *locked and encrypted* AP....guess what....then it's even harder for you to prove your innocence.
If my doorbell is that saturated with water that it needs it, they're welcome to wring it, but I think it'll still not work when they're done....
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Wow this is what we've been asking for all along - someone to educate everyone on securing their wifi. I think this is a good thing for police to spend their time doing. Serve and protect.
or else!
Racsim? That's the new medieval torture virtual reality device, right?
I think unlimited campaign spending launching super PAC commercials is the modern equivalent or mideval torture.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
A directional antenna doesn't need to be expensive to be effective.
I made one for a friend of mine for about 20$ in parts, out of a clamp-on style work lamp, a usb extension cable, and some epoxy putty. Works great. 20dbi increase in gain over a fixed FoV direction.
Couple with netstumbler, kismet, or some other profiling software and a cheap wifi dongle, and you have yourself an aimable wifi probe.
Course, it looks ghetto as fuck, be he doesn't care. It works, and can go through several walls.
I am contemplating the purchase of a makerbot or thing-o-matic, and making parabolic enclosures for wifi dongles as a for fun activity. I designed one that has a "same direction" dual dish design. Wide dish reception, narrow dish broadcast. Would love to make it and try it out.
Maybe sometime next year I will get one (3d printer).
The point being anyway, is that this doesn't need to be extraordinarily expensive. 2 deputies, some ghettodish equipment, and some compases with cheap netbooks, and you can easily calculate intersecting vectors for unsecured wifi.
Grammar Nazi
I wrote the post at work, and did not have time to throughly review for correct syntax. Forgive me for making a mistake, please oh please wont you good sir?
All mistakes in syntax and punctuation were left in soley to anoney yu. Eye HOPE U lIker it!
And I believe Lincoln is actually the largest city in Nebraska on Cornhuskers game days.
I kid, but it's close. You do NOT want to drive on Interstate 80 when most of Omaha is driving to Lincoln for the game.
Unless they're working with the ISPs to recover the address associated with the IPs. If this is simply advice being given out (in line with ISP advice anyway), and information isn't being stored or intercepted then fair enough in my book. Too many people end up in court giving it the "but I was hacked!" excuse when they had no password, or an astoundingly weak one, ignorance may be no ecuse but it's nice to see some proactive action in educating people.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
Whenever I look up my maps location on a non-GPS device using Google maps ... Google is VERY good about pinpointing the location in my home. This is due to my other devices, with GPS, reporting the information back to Google. Google knows "oh, that SSID is at these coordinates".
Not rocket science. Not foolproof either, but good enough for a project like this.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
"Cleetus, we got ourselves another member of that there 'Linksys' family, they sure are a big clan!"
Burma?
Actually, you're right. I lived in Lincoln for a while earlier this year, and yes, it IS the largest city in the state when there's a Husker gamer. By contrast, I now live in rural Texas. In a county where the largest "city" is about 3300 people...
You can close your eyes to reality but not to memories.
Wifi encryption is useless if anyone and everyone can join the network. Once you join, it's just like being on any other shared medium network. All your packets are available in the clear. If you're worried about security, use application level encryption.
It's not useless. Packets are not available in the clear, because everyone joining the network with the same password will get a different key. However, there are attacks possible against that version of WPA so a hacker on the network can crack someone else's key. But nothing is in the clear.
You can. This sheriff isn't arresting people for having hotspots, he's simply mailing them FUD.
Then again while it's fully legal to not lock your doors there's also no laws against the sheriff saying "You may want to lock your doors at night, sir. It will help protect you against burglary and vandalism." A crime is always 100% the criminal's fault, a theft is the thief's fault, a robbery the robber's fault, a rape the rapist's fault and so on. And it's still 100% the criminal's fault even if you act stupidly or recklessly, nobody forced them to be criminals even if you gave them an easy opportunity. I don't lock my door because it distributes the fault between me and the would-be thief, I just do it to take away his opportunity. The idealist in me would like to leave the door unlocked and everybody would leave my thing alone, but the realist in me would lock it every time. Part of life is dealing with reality as it is, not as you'd like it to be.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Pretty good when you gently touch them with a hot air gun to level the plastic, then gently spray with conductive paint.
(Or give the full montey with silver nitrate solution.)
The reason I keep my keys in my pocket, and lock my doors, is to stop the random bored teenager who is out looking for some fun.
I didn't use to lock my sliding glass door. But then I figured locking the door would stop the kids who are just bored, out looking for some fun. Of course the lock won't stop a real thief from entering through my HUGE sliding glass door.
I don't lock my car doors, because the convertible top is worth more than most of the contents in my car. I'd rather someone not slice it open, trying to get into my car. I keep my car keys in the pocket, not to stop the professional thief, but to stop a random joy riding teenager.
A long-standing police activity is to walk down the street and try the doors of closed businesses to be sure they're locked.
use a curved photo frame myself wrapped in tinfoil and taped, just enough to make my 3g usable. would be interesting to see your trailing lamp design. Sounds like it could be very useful.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Or...
You can leave it open so your neighbors with kids who are broke
and living month to month can have internet so the kids can do
their homework and everyone else in the family can enjoy something
that should be free anyway.
-AI
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
Last I checked it seemed that half of San Francisco was sharing open wifi connections. Yes, that might expose you to nasty hackers. I haven't heard of any problems though. I'd guess that on average, SF surfers are more sophisticated than Nevada surfers, yet they exposed themselves for the public good.
Would it be such a terrible thing if 75% of all wifi connections were shared openly? Not good for the ISPs who charge $100/mo, but good for the poor, good for the soul of the generous.
Is paranoia a tool for monopolist ISPs, security software providers, homeland security and the Republican conspiracy to spread FUD to get what they want? Can we shake off that dark cloud and show some public spirit?
What protections would be appropriate for an ordinary person who is willing to share their internet connection with their neighbors?
...omphaloskepsis often...
Oh, how sweet. Someone that thinks the Internet is only for browsing the web.
While I could tunnel my email, my ssh/sftp, my torrent downloads and the good old fashioned telnet that I use for one specific online service through HTTPS it's frankly just not worth the hassle.
Why does the link in the summary point to an article about the FIFA football game? Has there been 211 comments and nobody has RTFA?
If you're not already using SSL for your email, you're doing it wrong. And no, I don't mean webmail, but that's also good.
Your ssh/sftp don't need any extra tunnelling, but your telnet certainly does and your email might if you're using something like POP3 or IMAP (not the encrypted versions).
If you're already using ssh, then you can just tunnel everything through that instead - how much hassle is that?
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Yeah, everything except the telnet and the torrents is encrypted from me to the server. I don't telnet on open connections either, I ssh through to a box that I telnet from - the service doesn't support a secure connection.
My point is that the internet is not just the world wide web, secured or otherwise.
Actually, I'm not sure my steam downloads are secured either. Frankly I don't even care - my sign-in to steam is the bit that matters.
I get your point, but I originally specified using https to connect to websites. Any other protocol is best tunnelled through ssh as https is only relevant for websites.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
My WiFI access point looks unsecured to the casual wardriver. However, the firewall to which it's connected only accepts OpenVPN traffic. So yeah, you can pick up an address with DHCP, but you can't do anything until you establish an OpenVPN session.
I did it this way because I trust SSL/TLS a bit more than WPA and certainly a lot more than WEP.
This is in Nebraska. So yeah, wide spacing. We don't all live on top of each other.
How about some id on each wireless access point, which can be tracked through the service providers in the region?
How about "fuck no?"
Doesn't sound unreasonable, particularly if law enforcement is provided with the necessary tools and training.
Authoritarian policies always sound reasonable to authoritarians.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Uh, yeah... Because every WiFi device ever created doesn't have any way for you to measure the signal strength, as you walk around a building. Hell, I can pinpoint an AP without taking my phone out of my pocket. It might be a bitch in an ultra-dense, high-rise complex, but most places it just takes a little leg-work.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
The only 'danger' you expose yourself to by keeping an open wifi is that a moronic lawyer claims it must have been you and decides to sue you for things you didn't do.
Or if a moronic judge issues a search warrant for your home.
Well thank Jeebus there are no moronic judges in the US!
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
So, would you be cool with the sheriff walking around town, opening people's doors, and sending letters to everyone that had an unlocked one?
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.