Yes they do. From my 1st WRT54G to my latest AX mesh, I have never had a WiFi password. My friends and family that were visiting over the Holidays apricated it. Everyone used it, no one asked me for the password.
Are people still Wardriving? Even if they are, the odds of a malicious hacker coming to my neighbored is up there with getting stuck by lightning. Not losing sleep over it. Why should I?
1) Besides access control, having an unencrypted WiFi network is not great because your entire internet/local traffic is open to be sniffed. High-gain antennae, etc. You are essentially screaming the contents of (what would be) your ethernet cable into the void.
2) Access control is exactly the point. I suppose you could ban the TV's MAC address from your open network (and I suppose a sufficiently malicious TV firmware could randomize its MAC address), but your stated purpose (allowing open network access) is not exactly compatible with what you presumably wish to do (disallow network access to a smart TV).
Wifi encryption is the wrong layer anyway. Point to point tls is what you want to depend on. and sometimes I dream of the never realized ad-hoc ipsec connection, the actual correct layer to do encryption on. but ipsec was killed by it's own incompatible complexity, so tls is a good second best.
I run an open access point and depend on tls or ssh to protect my traffic.
The amount of risk people will subject themselves to in exchange for a marginal at best increase in convenience never ceases to amaze me.
There are a dozen good reasons why every piece of consumer grade networking hardware released in the past 15 years is not configured this way by default.
Sounds like its time for a wifi password unless you want all your neighbors smart TVs using your bandwidth to update firmware and send telemetry and download ads :)
Yes they do. From my 1st WRT54G to my latest AX mesh, I have never had a WiFi password. My friends and family that were visiting over the Holidays apricated it. Everyone used it, no one asked me for the password.
Are people still Wardriving? Even if they are, the odds of a malicious hacker coming to my neighbored is up there with getting stuck by lightning. Not losing sleep over it. Why should I?