Open Wireless Connections

Ok, so I'm waiting for our stuff to arrive for us to set up wireless in our new house. Should all be here next week. Anyway, my laptop screen was broked and I just got it repaired yesterday, brought it home and then turned it on to be lame and play my Nintendo DS simulator *hides*. Anyway, my laptop tells me there's a wireless network within range and when I check it, I see that it's not secured, meaning I can access it. So I did. It works fine. I'm just wondering if anyone knows the implications of me using this for the next week or so.. I know the position legally, but I'm talking in terms of the fact I'm using an unsecured connection. This means info I send can be intercepted, right? So I should steer clear of logging into ebay, email, paypal and online banking?

Thanks muchly ^_^

 

I would, unless you know the people with the network.

 

I'm having that to, a neighbours has a wireless router to, so i can hop on that and leech off connection, as far as i can tell, you can do everything what you want, it shoudnt log more than what a usual connection does ( incoming/outomcing packets ), so i doubt anyone would be able to steal your passwords or so.

 

I had it too 8D
it was much faster than my actual internet connection...but since last month it 's disappeared, don't know why ._.

 

They could though, and it gives me an idea. I should open my connection and then steal the packets.

 

I agree with Chaos_Blader, it is possible that they do it.

 

Yeah this is certainly possible, but I doubt there is much risk of it. Probably some idiot had someone set up a wireless network and they never put a password on it. Thats the case like 95% of the time.

 

Lol yeah indeed. Our neighbors have that too.

 

Ok. I'm pretty happy to continue to get the free access til mine is sorted . May steer clear of ebay/paypal type things for now though, just to be sure. Does anyone know up to what distance you can detect other's connections?

 

My laptop once detected a netwerk at around 50 meters/yards away.

 

Know your neighbor. If they are smart enough they can see everything your doing , but most likely they aren't smart enough. Before ordering FIOS , we used an unsecure network for like 1-2 years with ebay and everything. Never any problems and the neighbor was relatively smart.

 

You can see that your neighbours aren't very smart with computers adn stuff to leave their connection open for public access. I say don't worry and go for it. They probably don't even know that you are using their connection.

 

well i can give some good information and help to you:

TO set up secure wireless you should do following things:
1. change admin passwod to something like this (D4h_5i$#)
2. DON'T allow any remote connections to wireless router
3. Make the trafic encrypted also connection with eithe WEP or WPA/WPA2
4. ALLOW only DEFINED MAC adresses to go throu that device so basicly if you have wireless comp open CMD and type ipconfig /all and check the physical address/MAC address of the card and type to MAC address filtering in the router

There you go as simple it is only 4 steps

i did set up my wireless for 5 days ago and now i can't even see my router from outside my house even with ping so it is secure

 

If you were to ping I belive you needed to be conected to the network. The best idea is not to brodcast the ssid. I just have mac filtering since i am conected wirelessly and wired so I can't wep encrypt wired and will still encrpt the wired conection