Occasionally I break out my laptop at home to test a few things on my blog, or if I just want to surf the net while I’m cooking something in the kitchen. Lately though I noticed my wi-fi access wasn’t moving as quick as I’d like. I was using a Linksys router, and my signal was excellent, so I wasn’t sure what the problem was. But since I wasn’t using the laptop very often I didn’t think too much of it. However, one day it finally irritated me enough that I opened up my laptop’s wireless settings to check the signal’s strength. Signal was green and everything was gravy, except it was connected to a neighbor’s wi-fi.

Whoops!

Apparently I’ve been surfing on my neighbor’s wi-fi for the better part of a week, and I hadn’t even realized it until now. My own wi-fi is encrypted, so I should have known something was amiss when my laptop connected without giving me an error message, even though it was preset to connect to open wireless connections at Panera Bread.

Thank goodness I use wireless encryption! I mean I knew it would be relatively easy to connect to a neighbor’s open wireless network, but I had no idea it could be THIS easy. When I checked my settings again, I noticed that there were over 5 wireless networks in range, and only ONE of them was encrypted. Amazing.

Hmmm, wonder if I should take this opportunity to do some snooping around? No, no, that would be wrong.