mushion22: As far as the law is concerned, it is illegal to intentionally access any computer system that you have not been authorised to access. Gets a bit tricky there as to whether it is 'unintentional' if your computer automatically connects, but that would come down to how YOU configured your computer to behave, and what YOUR level of understanding is (eg if you configured your computer to always connect to any available network and you understood what you were doing then it would probably be considered intentional). http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1961/0043/latest/DLM330430.html?search=ts_act_crimes#DLM330430

Whether you could say the advertisement of the SSID of an insecure network gives authorisation... I doubt that'd hold up, in your case especially given your knowledge of how the system works. Its a little bit different to the open window case because you are broadcasting a signal that is designed to advertise and give access to your system.

This is all well and good, until you mix in free Wifi at Cafe's and Tomizone hotspots and the like, now you have networks which for all intents and purposes have a variety of names, with no security settings, all of which allow internet access, only some of them are unintentially insecured private networks, and others are freely provided public networks.

I doubt you could prove beyond reasonable doubt that I knew the difference between these two types of networks, and actually knew I was committing a crime, instead of using a freely provided service while drinking my coffee at the corner shop.

I believe in Karma, leach undo others as you want yours to be done.