Open or Secured Wi-Fi Connection?

2008_01_15 open wi-fi.jpg Is your home Wi-Fi connection password protected? Ours is, and always has been, but Wired has an interesting take on why you shouldn't lock down your connection.

Thanks to doglington for the pic.

Strangers parking in front of your house and using your connection for shady things? Probably not. More probable, offering your wireless network to friends and guests visiting your house in the same manner as a glass of water. True on both accounts, but we're still going to be sticking with our protected connection.

So what do you do, keep it open or lock it up?

-via Wired

Comments (6)

I'm torn on this one both ways...

Mine is locked, but when friends come over & want to use it I just type in the access code for them.

I used to keep my connection wide open, but then I started mounting external HDs off my access point, so I locked it down.

Both. I'm a bit geekier than most, but I've got an access point setup outside my firewall that's open to the public, and one inside that is password protected. If my friends or neighbors need access their welcome to my -guest network, otherwise my computers use my primary internal network for access to my files, etc. : )

I used to keep mine open, but I locked it down because too many people were logging on and slowing my connection down.

It's open now, but I have no longer use a/b/g and have invested in the Draft-n version. Very few people have computers that are made to use that draft.

My network isn't password protected, but it doesn't broadcast the name, so you would have to know it to join, otherwise you don't know it's even there.