I was contacted by Insight today and informed that my household's internet broadband use was excessive. It was not us doing the excessive use, however. They informed me that someone had been using our wireless--possibly a neighbor, or someone who had just parked nearby and taken advantage of our lack of encryption. Well, we will be remedying the security issue tomorrow, however I was wondering if anyone else in Woodlawn Park has had this problem.

All too familiar. Speaking as a network engineer, you should always, always, always use some sort of encryption. Most people only have WEP (which isn't great, but better than nothing). I would reccomend you purchase a wireless device capable of WPA2, and a computer to match it. While it's not perfect, it's much harder to crack than WEP. Anyone with a packet sniffer (free from download.com) can watch your WEP key being transmitted in plain text to the router every time you turn on your laptop.

I know there are several people within range of my house who have weak or no encryption on their devices.

The new $59 linksys routers have WPA2 encryption, and you can control the signal strength of the antenna, which means you can reduce how far your wireless signal is going. If anyone needs more information or has a question, just post here, i'll try to respond back.

I wonder what insight considers excessive use.  I guess the extra steps are there to ensure your security and so that people don't steal your service.  Happy surfing I guess.  But not too much!!