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Thursday November 26, 2009 12:37 PM AEST
Skip Navigation LinksPC Authority > News > Man arrested in suspected Wi-Fi theft
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Man arrested in suspected Wi-Fi theft

by Matt Chapman  on Aug 24, 2007
Tags: Man | arrested | in | suspected | Wi-Fi | theft
Perched on a wall with a laptop? It's elementary, my dear Watson ....
A 39 year-old man who was found using a laptop outside a house in Chiswick, a suburb in London, England was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of stealing a Wi-Fi connection.

London Metropolitan Police officers questioned the man as he was sitting on a wall outside the house.

According to Scotland Yard, the man subsequently admitted that he had been browsing the Internet using a nearby unsecured wireless broadband connection.

He was arrested on suspicion of breaching the 1990 British Computer Misuse Act and the 2003 British Communications Act and was released on bail until the 11th of November.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said that the arrest should act as a warning to anyone who thinks it is acceptable to use other people's broadband connections illegally.

However, James Walker, product manager at broadband access provider Zyxel, suggested that the problem is widespread.

"Although this arrest is intended to act as a deterrent, it is just a drop in the ocean as there are thousands of unsecured home networks, with thousands of people unlawfully using them to access the internet," he said.

Walker added that businesses need to make sure that remote workers' networks are secure to prevent unauthorised access to sensitive corporate information.

"The security of home computers is just as important, because they carry critical business data and must be sufficiently protected," he said.

"Home users must be educated to set high security standards, not just accept the basic default settings which can be easily bypassed."
Copyright © 2009 v3.co.uk
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