Wireless Stuff

I'm bored. Is it illegal* to connect to unsecured WAP's? The one's in question are public, I think. Unsecured (Except Administration) and SSID's are FOXNET-PUB01 through 03. I was out of town for a while and I came home and stumbled upon these new access points. Great signal quality, very little to no signal noise and very fast. Where they are coming from I'm not sure, but I suspect from a new rooftop tower that was put up on a local business about a week ago. Again, would it be illegal* for me to use these connections for personal use? I've done some searching on the subject and basically all I can take from my research into the matter is that "It depends." If it's not,* and are found to be public, does anyone know of a download manager that can get bits from the same file using multiple internet connections? Sounds silly yes, I am a noob.

I think that there was a thread on something similar, and it was concluded that it was most likely illegal. You can try to figure out who is broadcasting it, then ask them if it is okay to connect to it.

I don't see how it could be illegal. What law would you be breaking? I mean I guess they could try to say you're "stealing" bandwith, but whether or not that would hold up in court is questionable. Not to mention that if you're not running a server or anything, the bandwith would be negligible. Furthermore, if it's a business, they'd probably have a company install the tower/wireless. If they wanted it to be a private network, they'd probably secure it with wep...

Here is the thread I was referring to:
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=348425&

I guess it kind of depends on how you look at it.

i believe in england and other countries, yes its illegal to connect to somebodys network.
In USA im pretty sure its not illegal, its just illegal to steal somebodies bandwidth...so basically as soon as you connect to the internet from it and recieve packets, its illegal i guess

ps2cho said:

i believe in england and other countries, yes its illegal to connect to somebodys network.
In USA im pretty sure its not illegal, its just illegal to steal somebodies bandwidth...so basically as soon as you connect to the internet from it and recieve packets, its illegal i guess

Click to expand...

Yes it is illegal in England and most other countries. But i'm pretty sure i know its not in CALIFORNIA.