Put a password on your WiFi, or the SWAT team will raid you

Dan Seitz Contributing Writer, Tech

Follow @Theta1138 More from Dan Seitz >

So, an eighteen year old girl in Indiana forgot to secure her WiFi, and got raided by a SWAT team for it. Seriously.

Here’s how it went down. The girl’s next door neighbor, who is apparently going for his “Enormous $#!thead” merit badge, decided he was going to send threats to the police because he doesn’t like them.

Being just smart enough to realize that if he did this in a way that would be rapidly identified, the cops would come after him and bring a beating with them, he logged onto his next-door neighbor’s WiFi. Then he started telling the cops he was going to murder their families and friends, that he had high explosives, and all of Evansville would mourn the day they messed with him.

The Evansville police treated this like Osama Bin Laden has somehow materialized out of hell, called in the SWAT team, and tracked down the network. Then, despite the door being unlocked and open, they flashbanged this poor girl’s house, dragged her out…and then discovered how stupid they were.

Granted, the cops are not the winners in this story. They not only severely overreacted (and invited reporters along to cover their glorious victory), they pretty much completely botched protocol here: the first thing you do when dealing with Internet threats is figure out whether the IP was an open network or secured somehow.

But it still teaches a valuable lesson: leave the door open and some jackass will walk in. So secure your network, or get SWATted.

Swat Team Raids Wrong Home Due to Open WiFi Network [Ars Technica]