Digital Trends

Drive through a few neighborhoods in your area with a WiFi-enabled laptop or PDA and one thing will become quite clear:  there are a lot of wireless networks out there. But take a closer look at those networks and a more disconcerting trend will become obvious: people don't know how to - or just choose not to - secure their wireless networks.

A recent Associated Press article detailed an 800-mile drive in the San Jose, Calif. area in which over 3,600 wireless access points were detected. According to the article, nearly 40 percent of those networks were completely wide-open. "Wardriving", as it's called, is a popular hobby with several Websites devoted to the subject. But while most wardrivers do it for amusement, unchecked access to a wireless network can cause quite a bit of damage. CNN even ran a recent report about "warflying" – flying over populated areas to detect wireless hotspots. In the report, they detailed a warflying trip in which over 3,000 wireless networks were detected and over 67 percent of the networks did not have any encryption enabled.

Security is Your Business

The footprint of an 802.11 wireless network can usually extend beyond a residential home or small business and into a street or neighboring property. Because of this, neighbors or someone out on the street can easily detect and access WiFi networks. With access to an unencrypted network, someone could easily utilize it for malicious or illegal activity.

If you share folders across your network, someone accessing that network can have access to all of your documents. This means pictures, work documents, personal information, financial documents, Web browser cookies and anything else you may have on your computer. And they can't just view the information; they can save it on their own computer. Even without actively sharing folders on your network, there are ways into your private information.

Malicious acts can be just as troublesome as someone accessing your data. If your wireless router password is left as the factory default or you changed it to something easy to guess, someone can set up your network as they wish. This could mean completely locking you out of your network and the Internet. And if your router logs network activity, they can view logs of all of the Websites you have visited.

But beyond these privacy issues, someone with anonymous access to a wireless network can use it for much more menacing, and even illegal, activities. A wardriver could use your unprotected wireless network to surf the Web and go anywhere they wish on the Internet, without the fear of someone finding out who they are. This could mean posting incendiary remarks in Web forums or even writing threatening remarks about government officials or public figures. They could also send 1,000's of spam messages from your network, share copyrighted music or movies, send out computer viruses, or even worse, upload illegal content to the Web such as child pornography – all from your public IP address. If this happens, the culprit is usually anonymous and all activity can be traced back to you.