I got home this evening, opened my laptop, and instead of connecting to my home wireless network, Access Connections roamed me onto another network. I was pretty surprised that there was an unsecured wireless network in the vicinity. I live in a small block of flats. Scanning for networks, I discovered four others, two of which had public names, and one of those had encryption disabled and no security. Not only that, but the router had no password enabled. Clearly I didn't do anything to harm the network, instead I quickly got Access Connections to connect to my own network (no name advertised – check; high encryption – check; secure – check; strong passwords set – check).
I'm now in a bit of a quandary as to how to proceed. People tend to come and go around here, I don't know everyone in the block, and I don't know who this network belongs to – the network name doesn't give anything away. Do I put up a sign on the noticeboard to tell people to check their wireless security? – surely that's alerting anyone who walks through the hallway that there is bandwidth waiting to be grabbed. Do I knock on the front door of every flat asking if they have a wireless network that I can help them to configure? Or just leave it?
Andy Piper
The lost outpost 