Girl Geekette dotNet

Although many want to believe that Wardriving is illegal, the truth of the matter is that in a document released by the FBI, it states that Wardriving itself is legal. In the document FBI releases advisory about 802.11-spotting "wardriving" it states:

"Identifying the presence of a wireless network may not be a criminal violation, however, there may be criminal violations if the network is actually accessed including theft of services, interception of communications, misuse of computing resources, up to and including violations of the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Statute, Theft of Trade Secrets, and other federal violations."

So, in essence, Wardriving itself is not illegal. But, any activity using or compromising the services itself without authorization and/or permission is considered illegal. So, although it is not illegal to Wardrive, the lines are crossed, and it becomes illegal if you connect to the network and use the open Wireless Access Point for anything other than identifying that there is an open WAP.