If your Wi-Fi is not password protected.....

[The Bread Guy]

....here's what can happen - this from the National Post:

An Ontario man found himself the innocent victim of an Internet hijack during a series of arrests for the possession of child pornography.

The OPP and the Durham Regional Police laid 26 charges and seized eight hard drives last week in an operation targeting individuals who lured children to participate in sexual acts and shared child pornography over the Internet. Four people were charged and a fifth was released unconditionally.

Police arrived at a man’s home in Bowmanville, east of Toronto, with a warrant to search his hard drive for child pornography. By the way the man reacted, officers quickly realized that a mistake had been made. (The man’s name has not been released.)

It turns out someone had simply hijacked the man’s wireless connection from a nearby commercial plaza. This is an unusual situation and the result of a random act, said Detective Randy Norton, one of the investigators for Durham Police. “Someone just sat outside the house and searched for an Internet connection that wasn’t secure, ” Det. Norton said. “Anybody can grab onto it and start downloading this type of material.” ....

 

[gcclarke]

Frankly, there's enough open internet connections around that anyone who downloads child porn using their own internet connection is really freaking stupid.

Also, words 14 - 17 of the previous sentence are redundant.

 

[SupersonicMax]

Frankly, there's enough open internet connections around that anyone who downloads child porn using their own internet connection is really freaking stupid.

Slight modification.

 

[SeanNewman]

It is amazing how fast your signal will get jacked in a suburban neighbourhood if allowed to go unchecked.

I am with Rogers and had to get my modem replaced...and for some reason when I did I forgot to set it up via a password again.

Within two days, I got a warning e-mail that I was now at 90% of my monthly allowable usage (I had previously never gone past 25%).  Password went back up as soon as I realized I had forgotten to and no issues.

 

[Eye In The Sky]

A few other points if I may:

1.  change the default admin password (and name, if you can) on your router. 
2.  MAC address filters are another layer of security you can add.

 

[gcclarke]

Don't use WEP. It's very easily cracked. WPA ... well, it can be cracked, but not quite as easily.

 

[mellian]

I completely forgot our wifi password, hmm.

 

[2010newbie]

Here's another one from 2003 http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1069439746264_64848946. He was driving on the wrong side of a residential street and police pulled him over. He had no pants on......

CTV.ca News Staff

Date: Sun. Nov. 23 2003 12:05 AM ET

Toronto police have charged a man with theft of telecommunications in a bizarre case that involves downloading child pornography from a laptop in a moving car and using other people's computer networks to obtain the images.

Det. Sgt. Paul Gillespie of the Sex Crimes Child Exploitation Section described at a news conference "a relatively interesting set of events," that seem to mark a new era in criminal behaviour and police investigative techniques.

The case began two weeks ago Wednesday, at 5 a.m., when Sgt. Don Woods of 11 Division noticed a vehicle driving the wrong way down a one-way street in a residential neighbourhood.

When Woods stopped the car, he noticed the driver, a man, was naked from the waist down. In the car was a laptop computer and on its screen was an image of a 10-year-old girl in a sex act with an adult male.

 

[Neolithium]

This did get me curious, so I walked around my neighborhood with my iphone taking a peek at networks; nearly 30 of them were unsecured (Of course I didn't connect since that would be illegal) but it was pretty shocking.  I just use WPA with a nice long password of alphanumeric characters, combined with MAC Filtering for only my iPhone and my wifes laptop.  Foolproof? Of course not, someone with enough time and dedication would get in eventually; but I can't see those perverts doing more than looking for something wide open which takes no effort to connect to.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

My G router died recently, I had to get the new N router, it worked fine with my Vista based computer in WEP, but no way could I get the XP laptop to connect with WEP despite using that computer to intially set up the router.

 

[Occam]

Everyone has the right idea, but all of these steps need to be taken to secure your wireless access point/router.

1.  Use WPA2 encryption, or WPA if absolutely necessary (it's somewhat weaker).  Don't even bother using WEP, it's as useless as not using anything at all.
2.  Change your router password and SSID regularly.
3.  Disable SSID broadcasting.
4.  Use MAC address filtering.
5.  Disable any bands not being used (B/G/N) if you're not using a wireless device that utilizes those bands.  In other words, if all your wireless devices use wireless N, then most routers have the ability to disable the B/G band.

Taking all of these steps won't stop a determined cracker from breaking into your network, but it will cause the vast majority of script kiddies to move onto someone else's network.