If you're reading this you aren't on Eastlink

... or you have a close enough neighbour who isn't a jerk about his wireless.

Seriously, people, open up your wireless access points, as long as your next door neighbour isn't using it download massive amounts of movies and music every day then you'll hardly notice, and on occasions when your ISP goes down you'll be happy for the reciprocal generousity.

I put my email address in my SSID so hopefully if someone does use it they'll send a little thank you note.

And when a friend comes over with a laptop you won't have to explain that you don't want him or her using your radio spectrum, nor would you have to spend five minutes getting their MAC address or setting them up with your encrypted network.

That said, you should of course make sure your router's admin username / password isn't set to the factory default and that your own computer is reasonably set-up security-wise. But there's no reason to not be neighbourly until someone actualy does take too much advantage of it. And when that happens you can usually just tell them to get off your lawn. :)