Benjamin Smith III, 41, faces a pretrial hearing this month following his April arrest on charges of unauthorized access to a computer network.

Police say Smith admitted using the Wi-Fi signal from the home of Richard Dinon, who had noticed Smith sitting in an SUV outside Dinon's house using a laptop computer.

Innocuous use of other people's unsecured Wi-Fi networks is common. But experts say that illegal use often goes undetected, such as people sneaking on others' networks to traffic in child pornography, steal credit card information and send death threats.

Security experts say people can prevent such access by turning on encryption or requiring passwords, but few bother or even know how to do so.

By: DocMemory
Copyright © 2023 CST, Inc. All Rights Reserved