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<\/a>A study of 50 million Wi-Fi networks around the world by WeFi<\/a> — the company claims to have “the world’s largest community-based global Wi-Fi network” — found that 40 percent of the American Wi-Fi networks examined by WeFi were unprotected. No password. Open to everyone.<\/p>\nIs that bad, or is it good?<\/p>\n
People seem to be irreconcilably divided on whether open networks are good or bad. In 2002, I attended a panel discussion<\/a> where experts who had briefed then-czar of cybersecurity Richard Clarke didn’t even debate the merits of open networks. They stamped them a potential “terrorist tool.” Al-Qaeda, they said, was going to camp out in your company’s parking lot and launch attacks on the Internet <\/em>if you didn’t lock down your Linksys box with 128-character passwords.<\/p>\n WeFi’s study says that the most open countries for traveling Web surfers are Thailand, Israel, Brazil, Argentina and especially the Bahamas, where 69 percent of networks were open to the pubic.<\/p>\n By contrast, only 25 percent of observed networks in Europe were open. For now, WeFi hasn’t drawn any conclusions on why, or on what it all means.\u00a0These stats are the first released numbers from a more detailed report the company plans to publish later in the first quarter of 2010.<\/p>\n![\"wefistats\"](\"http:\/\/www.stoth.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/b8769_wefistats.jpg\")
<\/a>I’m in the other camp: Passwords suck<\/a>. Free Wi-Fi boosts America’s productivity. Whenever I find an open network, I spend a minute trying to figure out who operates it so I can send them a thank-you mail.<\/p>\n