[GuB-42]

Also unsecure. I remember driving around looking for Wi-Fi to steal internet from, I routinely found network shares full of sensitive documents. And I only looked for open WiFi and wasn't even trying to hack anything.

If I actually wanted to hack into networks, encrypted WiFi used WEP which could be cracked in minutes on a typical laptop. Most communication was unencrypted too, pwning entire WiFi networks wasn't even fun considering how easy it was.

[qingcharles]

Yikes. I forgot you could get free WiFi practically anywhere you could get a signal because everyone's WiFi was open or easy to hack.

[Gigachad]

I miss when free wifi was everywhere. When I was traveling Italy my phone seemed to almost never have signal despite paying for roaming data. And I couldn’t find free wifi anywhere. The few places that did have it like mcdonalds wanted me to authenticate with sms which wasn’t working since I had no phone signal.

Used to be that every cafe and business just had an open wifi network. Now if they provide it at all it’s password protected

[bonoboTP]

Part of the general decrease of trust.

[ghaff]

Or just greater awareness of possible bad outcomes if you just leave your WiFi open.

[bonoboTP]

> Used to be that every cafe and business just had an open wifi network. Now if they provide it at all it’s password protected

I reacted to this. Not personal open wifi. In cafes the password is often on the wall, in the menu or otherwise easily obtained.

[ghaff]

It's a business and assuming they allow WiFi access on-premises for customers, it's just a business decision that issues associated with having open WiFi are minor relative to customers who won't frequent your establishment--or a hypothetical for a future date that they'll deal with when the time comes.

Probably increasingly irrelevant with increased use of just mobile phones and 5G anyway.

[throw0101d]

> Also unsecure.

One of my early IT jobs in the 2000s was at a SME with Wifi: after you connected radio-wise, you had to start the VPN client, because at the time there really wasn't any (effective) encryption of the signal in 802.11 itself.

[ghaff]

In the early 2000s hotels also still routinely charged for WiFi. But someplace like NY, you could usually find an open ssid within range. But, yes, in that period many WiFi transmissions didn’t have a password.

[qingcharles]

God yeah, every time I stayed at a hotel I prayed that there was a business next door with open WiFi so I wouldn't have to pay $30/night.

[bee_rider]

I think it is more correct to say open wifi made it easier to connect to otherwise already insecure systems. After all, anybody in the house with an Ethernet cable could get those sensitive documents, right? Open wifi just expected users to actually follow the mantra of the time: don’t trust the infrastructure!