Wi-Fi: Is your neighbor piggybacking on your wireless connection?

[mandy]

Piggybacking, the usually unauthorized tapping into someone else's wireless Internet connection, is no longer the exclusive domain of pilfering computer geeks or shady hackers cruising for unguarded networks. Ordinarily upstanding people are tapping in. As they do, new sets of Internet behaviors are creeping into America's popular culture...

Many who piggyback say the practice does not feel like theft because it does not seem to take anything away from anyone. One occasional piggybacker recently compared it to "reading the newspaper over someone's shoulder."...

...many users do not bother to secure their networks with passwords or encryption programs. The programs are usually shipped with customers' wireless routers, devices that plug into an Internet connection and make access to it wireless. Many home network owners admit that they are oblivious to piggybackers...

...savvy users could piggyback into unprotected computers to peer into files containing sensitive financial and personal information, release malicious viruses and worms that could do irreparable damage, or use the computer as a launching pad for identity theft...

full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/05/technology/05wireless.html?ex=1299214800&en=de40126b08550e0a&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

[thentavius]

I wonder if this could be what's happening with my new laptop? When I turn it on, it located an unsecured wireless connection in my area. It then allows me to connect to it.

I don't know if it's connecting to a public access or free wi-fi hotspot, or to a neighbor's connection. How can I tell where it's connecting?

[thentavius]

I think I AM piggybacking, so I quit doing it. Bottom line is, I bet many people don't know what they're doing and piggyback without realizing it.

It's also a good idea to password protect your wireless network,

[FiberGuy]

[quote author=thentavius link=topic=2920.msg30018#msg30018 date=1162254149]
I think I AM piggybacking, so I quit doing it. Bottom line is, I bet many people don't know what they're doing and piggyback without realizing it.

It's also a good idea to password protect your wireless network,
[/quote]

Kudos for your integrity...

I must admit that I would quit too...


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... but only after I poked around "network neighborhood" a bit...

[thentavius]

LMAO!!

I hadn't even thought of that.