Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Free wi-fi?

Here’s an ethical question for you. Is it OK to regularly glom onto someone’s (company or individual) wireless Internet access without them knowing it?

That’s the latest poll question at the Great Lakes Geek site.

I see no problem in using a connection once or even twice in a crunch time situation, as long as you’re not sending/grabbing huge files and hogging all their bandwidth.

I know some would argue that since it’s out there in the ether and the people were too inept to secure their access, then it’s OK. I’m not so sure of that. Someone is paying for that access and to routinely use up some of their bandwidth doesn’t seem right.

I might be more forgiving if a company’s access was used rather than a family who just doesn’t know to secure their wi-fi. But still, I think the regular use of such access is wrong. What do you think? Let the Geek know.

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