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Although it is illegal in some parts of the world, 12% of U.S. and U.K. respondents to an Accenture survey have logged on to someone else's unsecured Wi-Fi connection.
Data that is sent via unsecured wireless routers is unencrypted and could theoretically be read by anyone who had the right network sniffing tools, but many people have tried logging on to unsecure Wi-Fi.
Logging on to open Wi-Fi signals is most popular with 18- to 34-year-olds, Accenture said. Nearly a third of them said they had done this at some point.
The practice is apparently more common in the U.S., where one in seven have piggybacked on free Wi-Fi networks, than in the U.K., where Accenture found that it was attempted by one in 11.
In some parts of the world, Wi-Fi piggybacking is considered to be a form of criminal hacking. In August, police arrested a 39-year-old man for using his laptop to connect to an unsecured Wi-Fi connection as he sat on a garden wall in the London suburb of Chiswick. And in a case that was widely publicized in the U.S., Sam Peterson of Sparta, Michigan, was charged after using a cafe's wireless connection to check his e-mail.
The Accenture study found that computer users are still engaging in some unsafe computing practices. Nearly half of all respondents said that they used the same password for all of their online accounts, and only a quarter of them have ever encrypted files on their computers.
Most computer users are sensitive to reports of identity theft, the study found, with about 25% of respondents saying that they would stop shopping at a retailer that had suffered a security breach. One-third said that they would continue to shop at the store, but would pay in cash rather than using credit or debit cards.
One other finding: People in the U.S. are more likely to keep their security software up-to-date than their U.K. counterparts. One in seven U.K. households never update security software. In the U.S., that ratio is 1-in-20.
Accenture's survey was based on telephone interviews with 800 U.S. and U.K. residents.
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Comments (15)
Re Borrowing WiFiBy Cybertelecom on June 23, 2008, 4:54 pmWhat is it exactly that you would be borrowing or returning?!? It's Part 15 FCC spectrum. You cant license it. You cant own it. You cant exclude others from it....
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re: umm....why is this illegalBy Cybertelecom on June 23, 2008, 4:42 pmIn certain states, the obligation is on the network owner to secure the network access. I doubt you will see Internet access police wardriving, looking for open...
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"borrowing wi-fi"By Anonymous on April 21, 2008, 4:04 pmWhere I come from, when you 'borrow' something, you generally return it - otherwise it is akin to stealing...
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Free WifiBy Anonymous on April 21, 2008, 10:23 amIs it not the responsibility of the owner of the access point to secure their own wi fi network?? If Joe Blow wants to broadcast the SSID of his unsecured network,...
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"Free" WiFi isn't free, it's stolenBy Anonymous on April 20, 2008, 10:28 pmIf I sit upon a garden wall, reading a map in the glow of a porch light, am I stealing that light?
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