Sydney Has 10,000 Unsecured Wi-Fi Points

daria42 writes "A bunch of researchers have been driving around Sydney, Australia, and scanning for unsecured Wi-Fi networks. You'd think that in this day and age, with all that we've learned about security, that Wi-Fi security would be almost universal ... but the truth is that about 2.6 percent don't even have basic password protection. Extrapolating a little, that adds up to 10,000 unsecured Wi-Fi networks across Sydney alone."

Re:How many of those were buinesses.....

[bemymonkey]

I wish that were the case here in Germany as well. Unfortunately the laws around here say you're responsible for your own unsecured WiFi - if the neighbors download illegal stuff, you're to blame for not securing it.

Hence, nearly everything around here is encrypted... even cafes and other places of business are switching to ticketed systems that allow them to track, pinpoint and restrict user activity. This isn't a problem for most patrons per se, but the prohibitive cost and added complication of such systems (compared to a few WiFi access points) is making a lot of places drop WiFi altogether of start charging for it.

Very unfortunate :(

Re:How many of those were buinesses.....

[L4t3r4lu5]

There's a service called FON [wikipedia.org] which has caught on with BT; Subscribe with FON, run a second open wireless network and share your broadband connection, authenticate to a FON account over VPN and share wireless all over the world where there is a FON wireless network.

More common in residential areas where there are no companies to be tied in with other subscribers.

Re:How many of those were buinesses.....

[tagno25]

I just checked my FON router, and the entire captive portal is via https.