Protect yourself from Wi-Fi freeloaders

[Mark Holtz]

From MSNBC:

Protect yourself from Wi-Fi freeloadersFlorida police faced a porn paradox. They were investigating a complaint by Tallahassee Community College that someone was subscribing to porn Web sites on the school's nickel. They traced the prurient behavior to the apartment of two women who had no criminal records and denied wrongdoing.

Investigators gave the residents the benefit of the doubt and kept on probing. They discovered that a neighbor had hacked into the women's wireless network and connected his computer to theirs (all the while getting his fill of porn, illegally billing a college account).FULL ARTICLE HERE (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13341214/)

Of course, they don't mention anything about WEP vs WPA, SSID broadcasting, MAC address filtering, and such.

[Bogy]

I spent the last couple of days at a meeting which was held on a college campus. Wireless access was thoughtfully provided and posts I made last night were through that access. I assume it was the college system. The network was simply labeled "wireless" but from the strength of the signal and proximity shown by my Toshiba laptop it had to have been originating in the dorm. I have no idea if any security is placed on the system during the school year, but there wasn't any now.

[Taha24]

My college has wifi all around and no, there is no security used.

[Mark Holtz]

At Sac State, when you log into the network, you actually get redirected to a web page where you are prompted for a student ID and password and agree with the usage agreement prior to logging into the network.