Open Wifi at Home?

Bruce Schneier has penned an interesting article over at Wired in defense of leaving your wireless network unprotected. Basically his argument is that the chance of a protected network saving you from some sort of abuse is small, and that open access points are a courtesy too your neighbors.

I’m of two minds about this. Logically, his argument makes sense. With the abundance of public access points, spammers and other malicious network users are more likely to go to a coffee shop then sit outside your house in a car with a laptop. There is also the principle in security that the cost of the countermeasure should not be higher then the value and likelihood of the threat. That means that if implementing WPA or WEP and other security precautions would take a substantial investment from you (more time/effort in this case), the benefit might not be there.

The other side of the coin though is what happens if somebody does use your network for evil. Although the chance is slim, the RIAA general will sue based on an IP address of a music downloader. And to the internet, every computer on my wifi network looks like it is making requests from the same IP address (called NAT addressing). So if the kid next door is downloading movies day and night (or god forbid the pervert down the street looking at child pornography) on your network, to the ISP, it looks like you.

Bruce’s other argument is that it is considerate to allow your neighbors access to your wifi. The thing is though, I pay for my connection and as such, I feel that the bandwidth is mine and my families. If one of my neighbors asked to use my wireless connection, I would be more then happy to allow them (contingent on what it was being used for).

I look at it like this: If a neighbor ran an extension cord up to Bruce Schneier’s house and used that electricity to power something without his permission, would he consider that as common courtesy? Maybe. If so he is a better neighbor then me Although bandwith is not a metered resource like electricity , it is still a finite one that I am paying for.

Regardless, since setting up basic wifi security is a pretty trivial exercise in it’s most basic form, the benefits of having the security outweigh the costs of implementing it.