On Thursday, September 20, 2012 11:02:28 AM UTC-4, wayne.b wrote:
On Thu, 20 Sep 2012 04:26:27 -0700 (PDT), Flying Pig

wrote:



Dave Skolnick is on a mighty charger, let alone a horse, to say that it's WRONG - JUST WRONG - to log onto any open signal

to which you personally have not been specifically invited by the owner....



====



Perhaps so, but it can easily happen by accident/happenstance. Most

of my PCs are set up to automatically log onto my home or boat network

when they boot up, no specific action required. If my home network

had a SYSID of "linksys", "netgear" or one of the other popular

defaults, they would connect to any unencrypted network they found

with that same ID. People who choose to leave their router set to a

default SYSID for one reason or another will generally not use a

password or encryption either.

I agree with you - but he would have you responsible for verifying, whether by mac address or any other means at your disposal, that you were not "intruding" where you'd not been specifically invited.

That you were walking across a park and entered into someone's private land adjacent, which looked like, and had the same features/address/everything else other than a different color mailbox (mac address), which you'd have to go looking for, would not cut it in his view. You would be trespassing, and whether or not the owner gave a rip, you were degrading his grass, and otherwise using resources for which he'd paid, and therefore, breaking, if not a chapter law, a moral law, to walk there...