When you hear a knock on the door, and then open it to find two Police Officers in front of you, I would guess your heart will start pounding, because in most cases, it will be bad news. But residents in Queensland, this might be an occurrence to some.
Launched a few days ago, the National Consumer Fraud Week and Queensland Police are launching a new project called War Driving. Police will be driving around neighbourhoods scanning WiFi access points and looking for unsecured ones. If they detect that your Wireless Network is unsecured, you’ll get a friendly letter in the mail explaining how and why you should secure your wireless network. If you don’t take action, they’ll be back to check up on you. The project is to help prevent cyber crime.
A recent poll on The Age says (at time of writing), 57% of users think this is a sensible use of police reasoning, and 47% think there are more important crimes to worry about.
In my opinion, they should have just asked Google for a list of unsecured WiFi networks when they got in trouble for scanning WiFi data. Nevertheless, if you haven’t secured your WiFi network, do so now.