Please consider opening your WiFi for others. [View all]
If you have adequate computer skills to set up a strong firewall and you live in a residential neighborhood. Mine is named "Free Wireless Access." It's fed by a fairly expensive cable broadband connection with very good bandwidth. We don't use a fraction of that bandwidth, but like the speed when we do. Our contract prohibits throttling and provides unlimited data.
Our "Free Wireless Access" hotspot is popular with real estate agents, who park in front and check their email from time to time. There's also a struggling family across the street who uses it. They have two school aged kids. They didn't have a computer, so I set up one of my old ones and let them "borrow" it until they could afford one. Our wireless router is sitting just inside a front window. I even set up one of the printers in our house as a wireless printer and the kids can print out their schoolwork on it. They just knock on the door and pick up their printouts. "Hi. I just printed some homework. Can I get it?"
Driving around my neighborhood with my wife's iPad, I noticed that there are at least a dozen unprotected wireless systems in my immediate area. Three of them are accessible from inside my house. Is it dangerous? Perhaps a little, but the computers in our house aren't networked and share no resources, and their firewalls are set up very tightly. I'm willing to take the risk of providing a hotspot for my neighbors. It seems very, very unlikely that anyone with bad intentions will try to hack through, since there are so many open wireless routers around.
Every now and then, I log into my router's IP address to see if anyone is using it. Usually, there's at least one besides the systems in my household. I'm glad to help. Lots of people have limited funds and can't afford broadband access, particularly in blue collar neighborhoods. It's easy to help them out.
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