Use Free Wi-Fi and Go To Jail

Is there a risk to using free wi-fi? There's one guy in England who is in jail because he used an open wi-fi connection. Police in West London arrested a guy using his laptop while he was sitting outside a house that had an unsecured wireless connection.

A Detective Constable said that "The practice, known as piggybacking, breaches the Computer Misuse Act and the Communications Act". (See the article here: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1035_22-6204148.html .)

Now, this is in England, so may not apply to users here in the US. But another columnist at ZDNet wonders if using a Skype phone (connects via wi-fi) could get you in jail. As he explains here http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1035_22-6204148.html, he was testing his Skype phone, went to a new area, and was surpised to get an incoming phone call.

"After some further investigation I determined that the phone was automatically configured to connect any “open” (read unsecured) Wi-Fi network it can find. Of course the majority of users won’t ever bother changing the default settings and many won’t even know how to change it or what it implies if they don’t change it. Would this make them criminals in the eyes of the law since ignorance is never an excuse?"

Interesting question.

And then there's the issue of the use of your unsecured wi-fi connection at your house. What is an evildoer uses your wi-fi connection to download pr0n? Or make a threat to an elected official? Or downloads illegal/unlicensed music? Who are the authorities (or the RIAA) going to go after? Probably the owner of that broadband connection that has a wireless router.

Is your wi-fi connection encrypted? Perhaps it should be. It will only take a few minutes, and I'd bet that you could find the instructions on the wi-fi router manufacturer's web site.

"Rick's Best Computer Security Practice" : get your wireless network encrypted. You don't want give the bad guys a free pass into your network (or your computer) on your dime.





http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=699