Just curious what people's opinions are abouting mooching unsecured wifi from neighbors?

I use my neighbour's connection to play Mario Kart DS online. I don't think it uses a lot of his bandwidth so I don't feel that bad about it.

I would use my own connection but the crappy Dlink router I have (soon to be replaced with a Linksys) has a very lackluster WiFi connection.

I don't like it. I'd be pretty pissed to learn one of my neighbors was getting for free what I have to pay a large amount of money for each month. Its also illegal.

Willingly sharing it with someone I wouldn't have a problem with, if there was some sort of agreement and understanding on the bandwidth they were going to use.

i have 3 unsecured wireless signals right next to my house and i have an agreement with all three of them that if i tap the bandwidth then i will help them with half the bill..i don't use it very often just when my 5.5meg connection goes down and i need to play some source lol..i would just let your neighbor know and see what he says.. he is obviously not smart enough to secure it in any way so if he says no keep using it..lol

I have wifi on my LAN but I keep it secure using WEP. It's not exactly rocket science. Seem like if you leave your network unsecure, you're leaving an open invitation for people to use it.

I don’t like it either! If you want to use something of mine at least ask.

It's always nice to ask, although silently checking your e-mail and a couple of webpages once may result in far less trouble than telling the generous neighbour that they are ****** (using unsecured wireless) and that you want to steal stuff from them (it is unbelievable how wrong some people understand other people).

Always use encryption on your wireless network, even if you don't mind sharing it with your neigbours (and please tell this to the people silly enough to have unsecured wifi around you). Unencrypted wifi means that anyone can come and listen on your internet sessions.

Many people do not realise that most internet traffic in unencrypted and an eavesdropper can see the contents of your e-mail sessions (including passwords and message content), instant messaging (depends on the service) and web pages (including passwords). This is OK if you have a wired connection, but with wireless it's a serious security risk. I'm not even going to mention that your wireless is inside the router firewall and you are wide open to any malware unless you have software firewalls on all your local computers.

Try to use WPA, it is far superior to WEP. Although cracking WEP is not difficult, it is still better than nothing. Cracking the key requires some effort and the evil wardriver may have to sit in front of your house for several hours (and risk detection). A casual wifi user will probably just forget about it when they see the "encrypted" label next to your SSID.

Speaking of which I just replaced my Dlink router with a Linksys & the system was setup in less then 30 minutes with WPA, MAC filtering & SSID broadcast turned off. & now I no longer leech on my neighbour for my daily Mario Kart sessions online.

When I grew up I used to love watching Batman on Saterday mornings beat up the guys that would steal stuff. Watching scum sucking stealing evil doers getting beat up by the Batman never gets old. As to yor question......

funny. All 3 of my neighbors have unsecure wifi..... The way i feel about it is if they are watering the lawn and their sprinkler lands on my grass, it's free!

Otherwise, secure it!

I use broadband cable in my house anyware, but knowing that I have free wifi as a backup is nice.