Also, is it just me or are people finally securing their networks? Or more likely, getting them supplied that way by default. I can count exactly 20 wireless networks sitting here in my living room, including mine. Only two of them are open and they're both BTWifi which I think is that shared thing that's meant to be open.

Must be different for the US then - where I am people don't leave them open much and if I'm in a pinch I've got HSPA/3G/whatever.

<Dons tinfoil hat>
Um this link here sort of explains why it's a good idea to turn of your wifi.

http://hakshop.myshopify.com/products/wifi-pineapple

Basically it impersonates a wifi network your phone already  knows about INCLUDING secured ones and sits in the middle of your phones conversation with the internet.

You'd be surprised at how many of these I've seen poking out of bags in coffee shops ;-)
<takes off tinfoil hat>

Marie

coooool!

Those guys must really be enjoying my instagrams and 'witty' tweets ;)

Certainly in my apartment block block of flats there's no open ones. That's probably because there's no really long-term tenants so when they move in and join an ISP they get a WPA/WPA2 secure router.

Even WEP is thin on the ground these days. Which is unfortunate because it's relatively easy to crack.

Whereas if you were to go up and down my parents road there's plenty of Open and WEP routers.

Mostly their after your usernames and passwords, apps can be remarkably lax when talking back to their respective severs.

duly noted. Like I say, what a cool gizmo!

Yes it is isn't it, I saw it first three years ago at a security con, the presenter had a room full of people diving for their phones :-)
Mostly the tech has been available to do that on a laptop easily, but that was the first time I'd seen it in a pocketable package.

Yeah, I've seen that Linux thingy that sounded very similar to my layman's eye. 

I've got some tags and thought I'd use them more than I do too.
One is on the back of the ipad, and switches on tethering for it. Another is in the car, switches on Bluetooth, and messages my wife to saying on the way home.

What if you're not going home? Do you have a seperate one for the way to work?

I reckon wifi drains ~30-50% on my nexus 7. When I keep it turned off (except when I actually want to use it), it doesn't kill the battery in < a day.

My new (first ever) wifi router was secure* (albeit with stock pw, which I immediately changed) outta da box.



*does not apply to NSA spookdom

They used to ship them wide open, I'm glad they changed that.  Although a local ISP still ships some with WEP.  I can crack wep is about 10 seconds!

When you reckon that are you checking the battery stats? It'll tell you with some precision. Bit odd for wifi to kill a tablet battery in one day though, it's never occurred to me to turn my iPad wifi off.

Definitely sommat weird happening there, I leave wifi permanently on on my n7 and it'll go for ... well, I don't know cos I use it a fair bit, but leaving it on (it'll go to sleep of course) for a day doing nothing doesn't even drain 1% of the battery.

Stats show display using 95%, but not what's used when display is off.

well... that's just everything else in that list, surely? Which are likely used when display is on or off. The display is using 95% of your battery, as in the screen being on is the main power draw. Which sounds much more likely. It's a lot of pixels to push. 

I'm thinking now it may be silent updates that's doing it. I left the WiFi on all day at work (as usual) and didn't plug in the USB (unusual) and it only drained ~7% or so including an hour surfing before work, and half hour of eBook reading on the subway (Mountains of Madness) after a full charge last night.

That sounds more like it. Although I don't know how many silent updates actually happen unless you've deliberately set them to, I find most default to manual. Still - maybe you had a rogue app suck up the juice? That definitely happens.

Mountains of Madness I have only read in comic form so far. Apparently Del Toro really really wants to make a film of it but the Man won't give him budget.