Steal this
Security guru Bruce Schneier, who’ll be keynoting at Linux.conf.au in Melbourne later this month, has penned an opinion piece for Wired on why he leaves his home Wi-Fi network unlocked. Under the heading “Steal this Wi-Fi” he says he considers sharing access to his internet is basic politeness: “Providing internet access to guests is
kind of like providing heat and electricity, or a hot cup of tea.” We love the sentiment Bruce, but in Australia at least we have download caps and excess use charges to consider too.
Comments
Absolutely. I don’t know what kind of connection Bruce has got at his place but my 20 gig/month with Internode would disappear pretty quickly in my complex if I left my access point open. I can see his logic but in my own experience, something like this will quickly get abused by the usual minority who ruin it for the rest of us.
I would worry more about the content that might be downloaded by uninvited guests using my account.
I agree with Stuart, if an uninvited guest accessed sites of dubious reputation, then the FBI etc would be coming to visit Bruce and there wouldn’t be much he could do to prove that he wasn’t the one doing the browsing…