thou shalt not steal (public service announcement)

I don't see how people can not consider "piggybacking" onto someone's wireless connection as stealing?

"No one is being harmed" is a useless excuse, "I am not actually 'taking' anything from them" (technically you are taking bandwidth if you want a technicality). "I am just borrowing it and will give it back," nice try.

It some ways it is said how much time we spend on the internet and when we travel away from home or work we desperately seek a connection for email, or blogs. And it will get only more addictive as our country mushrooms the land with hotspots.

Great article from New York Times today.

Also just wanted to remind people who do have wireless routers, you must encrypt the wireless for your own protection. It does not take the most sophisticated person to "piggyback" and the holes in most systems are scary.

1) The most obvious is that people will use open connections for illegal behavior such as child pornography and mp3 downloads (yes, I am in the process of repentance to my MP3 perspective).
2) If you network your home computers through the net, you are opening up the possibilty of hackers being able to get into your system.
3) Sophisticated hackers can "mirror" your keystrokes and "borrow" your passcodes to important sites.

Therefore, you must encrypt your router.
It is fairly easy with most routers
type in
192.168.1.1 or 192.168.2.1 (general private router ips)
into your explorer address bar and you should be able to navigate from there.