Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I would argue that this is his responsibility. It's negligent to leave a wireless connection unsecured. If the connection is abused as a result, then the owner of the connection should be responsible for that. It's like leaving your car unlocked and the key in the ignition; the police probably won't have too much sympathy for you if it's stolen, and your insurance certainly won't pay out.
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For many years ISPs shipped routers to their customers that were pre configured with open WiFi, customers had no idea it was insecure. Others knew enough to turn on WEP but not enough to know people could break the security of it in a few minutes. Those who knew about WEP were smart enough to turn on WPA (which if they've failed to keep up with geeky tech news, they'll not know it is also breakable in a minute or so and should be running WPA2)
This is one of the reasons I think the first wave of letters is a very good idea. People need to be aware there's a possible problem and either know how to configure the security of their device to fix it OR pay someone to do so. The letter would ensure they're aware and can take the steps needed to check/sort it.
Now chances are the current WPA2 will be eventually broken and hopefully by then there's a new flavour out we can all move to temporarily, but if/when it is, there's going to be a lot of vulnerable wifi connections because people won't know it's broken. Those people should not be responsible for someone cracking and abusing their network and been fined on evidence of nothing more than their IP been used.