For most of my adult life, I've lived in congregate housing and I've always opened up my WiFi as a public service and never had problems. Yes, I know--I've been lucky.
Now that many routers are dual band, I am able to keep a secure network for myself and an open one for guests.
I do this for one reason--I deplore waste. No need for someone to spend $40/month for access when a neighbor has surplus capacity.
My neighbor had his WIFI open because he didn't know jack about IT. Some perv found this open wifi and would download and upload child porn.
Let's just say it took my neighbor over 1 year to clear his name. And the only reason he cleared it is because my security cameras caught the perv that would sit in his little car at at the curb.
I like the idea. If people everywhere suddenly latched onto the idea of real community, it could happen. The chance of that happening in most westernised cities? About as likely as Apple providing free wi-fi to the city of Cupertino I'd say.
The security issues cut both ways. How do you know that a Wifi hotspot with the SSID "xfinitywifi" is really run by Comcast? It could just as well be a bad guy fishing for Xfinity passwords. By using public hotspots, you also open yourself up to a variety of man-in-the-middle attacks.
I was under the impression that you would be held legally liable if someone did something illegal using your network
I used to keep my wifi open so anyone could use it, then this happened...
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why should i give away something i pay for for free? No thanks.
We need the internet and the access points to be like a utility. There is probably a ton of profit that can be wrung out of our local cable companies and either returned to customers or put into upgraded service.
But until then and until I have easy access to better diagnostic tools, I won't open my Guest network to strangers. There are some weird folks who live in the house next to mine. Who knows what they would end up streaming and how much capacity they would use once they realized I had an open and free network. Not to mention that I pay for 30 Gb download speed and 5 GB up. So I've probably got the the fastest connection on the block.
For most of my adult life, I've lived in congregate housing and I've always opened up my WiFi as a public service and never had problems. Yes, I know--I've been lucky.
Now that many routers are dual band, I am able to keep a secure network for myself and an open one for guests.
I do this for one reason--I deplore waste. No need for someone to spend $40/month for access when a neighbor has surplus capacity.
So many people here raving about opening up their WiFi and freely sharing their internet with their neighbours, but if you were to call these same Americans "socialists" they would jump down your throats and rip you a new one.
"Sharing" services is socialism, period.
So you get access to other wifi while out and about. Makes sense to me.
"Sharing" services is socialism, period.