Patent ID: 7730219

Claim:
A method implemented on an information handling system, said method comprising: passively detecting an existence of one or more wireless networks in proximity to a wireless signal detector; determining whether each of the detected wireless networks is an encrypted wireless network or an unencrypted wireless network; in response to determining that one or more of the detected wireless networks are unencrypted wireless networks: identifying a restriction level that applies to each of the unencrypted wireless networks, wherein the identifying comprises: accessing each of the unencrypted wireless networks and retrieving an initial page of data from each of the accessed unencrypted wireless networks, wherein each of the retrieved initial pages includes one or more fields; retrieving one or more expected fields from a data storage; comparing the one or more fields included in each of the retrieved initial pages with the one or more expected fields; classifying a first set of the unencrypted wireless networks as unrestricted in response to the comparison revealing no unexpected fields included on the pages retrieved from the first set of unencrypted wireless networks; and classifying a second set of the unencrypted wireless networks as restricted in response to the comparison revealing one or more unexpected fields included on the pages retrieved from the second set of unencrypted wireless networks; and notifying a user of the existence of at least one unprotected and unrestricted wireless network that is in proximity to the wireless signal detector based on the identifying.