The early days of WiFi in the wild.
Wardriving: driving around looking for open 802.11 wireless networks. It’s related, etymologically, to wardialing — the old hacker practice from 1983 of sequentially dialing phone numbers looking for modems, as seen in the movie Wargames. Same principle, updated for the 21st century.
The situation in 2002: a home wireless router costs a couple hundred bucks and plugs right into your DSL. Out of the box, no security. Anyone with a laptop can sit in your parking lot and use your connection. This is fine if you want an open network (Starbucks); less fine if you don’t.
I took off from work one night and drove home to Escondido, then to my sister’s house in Vista — about 20 miles total. Left MacStumbler running. Found something like 20 wireless networks along the way.
I didn’t stop to try to connect to each one. But in the morning I did pull over at one of them and found it open. Not to break in — I had no interest in their computers. Just internet from the parking lot of an industrial park.
Looking for radio waves is marginally legal. Using someone’s open network is relatively harmless. Driving while using a laptop is, in fact, illegal — which is why you pull over when you hear the detector ping.
My advice: secure your networks. Or at least know what you’re offering to the world when you don’t.