Google Ordered To Teach America How To Put Passwords On Wi-Fi Networks

What a bullshit case, judgement, and punishment. Unencrypted wifi should be collectable. Don't broadcast in the plain on a public channel if you want some special level of privacy. This is an incredible case and probably not politically worth the fight for google. All of our rights have been limited by this judgement.

&#62; to instruct Americans not to let neighbors free-ride on their Wi-Fi networks<p>This is such a weirdly negative framing. What's wrong with sharing? I've always left my wifi routers open and unsecured so my neighbors can use the bandwidth if they want.

Aren't two issues being conflated here? (1) Securing access to your wi-fi with a password so that your neighbor can't free-ride on your ISP and (2) Encrypting your wi-fi traffic so that your neighbor (or Google) can't spy on you.

schneier on open wifi networks (he's for them): <a href="http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/04/security_risks_7.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/04/security_risks...</a>

&#62; Google is going to teach naive people how to put passwords on their Wi-Fi networks.<p>Good luck with that. Setting up passwords varies between different routers. So what may work in their ad may not work for grandpa down the road. Telling manufacturers to set a wifi password by default would probably do more to secure people.

I would like to propose that we, as technologically literate people, start to separate the concepts of encrypting your WiFi signal, and sharing your WiFi signal.<p>Encryption has true security benefits, primarily the prevention of HTTP session hijacks via tools like Firesheep.<p>You can still share your network by simply putting the password in the SSID. Name your network "Password is 12345" or something. Encryption protects against Firesheep even if everyone knows the password.