Q:

Wi-Fi connecting to other networks of the same name

I've been running Ubuntu 14.04 on a macbook air for about a year now, and I've recently been experiencing some strange behavior when it comes to my wireless connection.  
Let's assume my wireless network is called MYHOME123.  Every once in a while, I get a dialog box asking me to input the password to MYHOME123, which usually resolves itself when I disconnect and then reconnect back to the same network. 
In spite of this, I still find MYHOME123 1 and MYHOME123 2 in my drop-down Wi-Fi network menu, and examining the network settings shows that only one of the MYHOME* networks has the password I set.  All of the others have no password, which I assume is the reason why I could connect to them. 
What's even stranger is that this problem is non-existent when I try to connect using a windows or mac os machine, which leads me to believe that it could be an Ubuntu glitch.  Has anyone experienced this before?  What's the reason behind it? 

A:

This is a universal problem with WiFi auto-configuration:
It happens under Windows and Ubuntu and seems to happen when a network goes out of range and then comes back.   (Sorry, no experience with fruity variations on the same theme)
The only time I never had this happen was on a console-only server without network-manager nor wicd, but this was my sole sample so that one could be anecdotal.