Would you share your wireless network with neighbors?

[withm]

No, no, no, a thousand times no.

If they get involved in anything of an illegal nature (child porn? terrorist activities) the FBI will be investigating YOU forever.

Just say no.

[smilingcat]

Some of the nicest people are the ones to watch out. There was an awkward situation at my work. Some person fairly high up with grand children was found to be surfing on porno site.

He didn't know that the IT kept track of all the different web sites visited and for how long. What was striking was that the person would have been the last person anyone would have suspected. Tight upper lip no non-sense kind of a guy. He was an extremely painful person for any one to work with and always his way.

So the answer is NO!! No matter how much you trust them or don't expect. They could also access your computer. It's not that hard to do. Give me a few minutes and I can find out your network and some.

Majority of the people out there do not secure their wifi and that is very bad. I've gotten pretty upset with my sister and their grown kids over their cavalier attitutde. Just to prove my point, I hacked into their system and printed nasty gram out on their printer.

And if they did something illegal and the police obtains a warrant to seize the equipment, it will be yours and not your grass eating organic neighbor with hairly arms and legs and walking around in birkenstock sandles.
(I'm a socialist, so I can say such things).

Just tell them that you are nearly max'ed on your alloted Gbytes of transfer.

simple answer is NO!

[VeloVT]

Thanks, Smilingcat, I was hoping you would reply.

To be clear, our wireless network is currently at least superficially secure - wireless network is set up with WPA2 security with 18 character password including multiple cases, numbers and characters. And, as mentioned, firewalls are enabled and sharing is disabled, and each of our computers is set up with an admin password - my "everyday" account is actually separate from my administrator account, and my "keychain" (apple user) has a separate password from my login password. And, as mentioned, sensitive docs are stored on an encrypted volume. But, I'm not a computer or security expert and I could certainly have left some door open, even before you let open the network.

Do you feel more comfortable about sharing a network using a router that makes it possible to establish guest networks?

[Biciclista]

we allow our guests to use our internet. we have had a lot of guests lately. I would probably be comfortable sharing with SOME neighbors. You can be the judge of your own neighbors (I have some i'd trust, and others I wouldn't!!)

[Atlas]

We do this with out landlord in a somewhat reverse situation. He has the router and we are on his network. We bounce it through our time machine to extend the range but I understand we are all on the same account. It's great and having the included internet brought our duplex into our price range when we initially moved in. I guess it comes down to how well you will know your neighbors. We've known ours for a few years so we didn't think anything of it. If you're going to constantly worry about it then decline from sharing so you don't have that added stress.

[Koronin]

The only place that I've seen open networks to be common is in beach rental communities. Basically these are areas along the coast with tons of homes that are rented out on a weekly basis for vacation rentals and many of those homes do have open wireless networks. If I owned a vacation rental house I'd actually do it as a wired only service. Go ahead and bring your laptop, but you're going to have to hook it up wired to the connection. That way the guest can use it, but it's not out there for everyone. We've rented homes that had both and it make any difference to use which the house has as long as it has internet service of some sort.

[bmccasland]

As indicated in the header, I'm in the No category.

I've known a very nice family man, who was arrested by the IT squad of my local police department (when I lived in another state) for internet child pornography. Was quite a surprise to see his mug shot in the local paper.

And as others have indicated, you won't know who they might give the password out to.

If you want to get to know your neighbors, invite them over for a BBQ.