I disagree. An open WiFi network that is not being advertised would be similar to leaving a door unlocked or the shades open. When that network is actively advertised it ceases to be an open blind, and moves into open house territory.

So if my front door is open, or my garage door is open, you feel you have the right to enter my home without permission?

If you are advertising that your door is unlocked, and the precedent is to enter unlocked doors - as it is to connect to open networks, then yes. Permission in such a scenario is implied.

You make these analogies attempting to equate an advertised open WiFi network to an unlocked home, while ignoring the precedent around both of those things.

It is expected that people connect to your advertised open WiFi network. It is not expected that people wiggle your doorknob to check if it's unlocked or not. If you put a sign on the door advertising, "the door is unlocked!" then I wouldn't be surprised when someone mistakes that for "come in".

I think that depends a bit on context. If I am at home, and my neighbors are advertising an open Wi-Fi network, I’ve never taken that as an invitation to connect and use it. However, if I’m at coffee shop Foo and I see “Foo Guest” advertised, then sure…

Does that also give you the right to sniff their network and steal their email passwords?

No it doesn't. Imo, that would be both poor etiquette, and a violation of trust.

While I do remember hearing about Google Maps vehicles connecting to open WiFi networks in the news, I don't recall hearing about private credentials being published. Was that the case? I thought it was just a map of open WiFi networks that was published with basic details such as SSID?

Edit: I found the article (2010, holy cow does time fly). It looks like they did collect payload data for non-encrypted traffic. Even though the data wasn't published in any way, I must agree that they went too far. I would have no issue if they were to simply verify that they could connect and record basic info such as SSID, but collecting payload data from network requests was inappropriate.

I've never felt that it's appropriate to connect to residential open wifi. If I see one near where I live, I assume it's a misconfiguration.

The splitting of hairs between “open” and “advertised” is ridiculous. It’s the users who had their passwords stolen, not the hotspot.

A better analogy is:

I leave my door open with a welcome sign out the front.

Two people enter.

One of them picks the pocket of the other.

And then the thief blames the guy who told him about the open door in the first place.

To be clear, my stance on the matter is that it is 100% okay for anyone to connect to any open WiFi network.

I don't find it particularly troublesome that maps of open WiFi networks exist.

I do not, however, think that it's okay to behave maliciously, or inappropriately on open WiFi networks.

My earlier response to your comment about hoovering plain text passwords didn't properly acknowledge the bad behavior that took place. I concede that you are correct, it was rude and insidious behavior.

No worries, thanks for being a good sport. I think we agree all around.

It was never the connecting that bothered me, it was the storage of the data encountered.