Take: A laptop, a car, a driver and a large city. In our case that are a Schneider Hyrican notebook, a VW Golf III, Tom and Cologne. Slightly drive through the city and search for wireless networks time and again – the Windows integrated WLAN manager is absolutely adequate. As soon as you have found an unsecured wireless network, assign the driver to stop. Search for a parking place and click Connect. Now you have to wait.

Yeah, and some seconds or minutes later, depending on the connection’s quality, you are inside! It’s really that easy. Now you can surf to your heart’s content, catch up your emails or whatever else you want to do. Within five minutes I counted 6 or 7 unsecured wireless networks. I just would have to choose one.

So here’s my appeal: Dear inhabitants of Cologne, please, please lock your WLAN networks! You surely don’t want the whole world to surf via your wire, do you? It’s not that difficult to set up a WEP or WPA encryption and protects you against unbidden visitors. Who knows in what mischief those surfers get into on your WLAN…

ADVICE: I explicitely request nobody to use other people’s WLAN. That’s shameless and in most countries it’s also illegal. Read more about it here.