[MDA III, XDA III, PDA2k, 9090 General] Doormat:
There is always a more complicated way ... that's part of the fun, I think :D

Yes and No.

An unsecured AP provides a simple means for someone to access the Net anonymously. For someone with malicious intent this has great advantages, as you can imagine. And whatever they might do would be traced back to you.

Don't get me wrong ... I'm not suggesting that there is a pack of rabid hackers circling your place using your wifi as an initial entry point to permit them to realise their schemes to bring down the Internet and western civilisation ;-)

But, as I often point out to my clients ... How would you feel if you found out that in the middle of the night someone used your unsecure AP to upload a couple of hundred MB of kiddie porn? And that you then had to prove that it wasn't YOU.

I admit - it's unlikely and a bit graphic ... but it IS a possible senario.

Less dramtically there is the cost. I'm not sure what your deal is with your ISP ... but in Australia a lot of people have quota's - a given data allowance per month, after which they are either charged excess data rates or are shaped to narrowband speeds. I imagine it would suck to experience either because someone has been downloading movies over your wifi.

It is fairly simple to tunnel any kind of connection through port 80 (which is used for http). Goggle for http AND tunnel and count the hits.

There is, of course, an overhead with WEP or any other encryption scheme. I personally haven't ever had a problem, although I know some who have.

Generally they found updating the firmware on the router/AP end, and using the latest drivers for their client got them the best performance. YMMV of course.

Quite possibly nothing ... it is not uncommon for people (even people who should know better) to focus on everything but the channel. Everyone does it :D

If WEP is your only common denominator and updating firmware and drivers doesn't improve your peformance sufficiently under WEP then there is one security measure that I routinely employ, which rarely seems to be mentioned. TURN THE WIFI OFF WHEN YOU AREN'T USING IT.

Case in point ... my home AP is currently running (I see no point in power cycling it over and over) but the wireless is disabled. It takes 30 seconds to browse to the setting on the menu to enable it. It then takes about 30 seconds before I can associate. Before I go to bed at night I make sure that the wireless on the AP is disabled ... I'm not going to be using it so there's no need for it.

There is a lot of discussion about how easy it is to crack WEP ... and it IS easy. IF you have the hardware and sofware and know what you're doing, etc. I should point out that I do NOT have the setup to crack a WEP key ... but I've studied it sufficiently so that I know it's not really secure. BUT it will keep the majority of those who wish to jump on your bandwidth out. So if you can get it going, do so.

The other aspect is the security of what you are moving across the network. Internet banking, for example, is pretty secure as the data is encrypted anyway. But your usernames and passwords for your email, forum accounts, and anything that you are sending that isn't encrypted by default is being broadcast in clear.

This only becomes a problem IF someone is bothering to gather the packets being broadcast and then extracts the relevant info from all the other noise. Which is probably pretty unlikely. Unless, like a mate of mine, you live in a block of apartments with 3 unsecure wifi AP's in reach. I recently suggested that if he were to sell his flat, he could get more by pointing out that it came with free internet :D