Yes, I do only connect to my own network and never theirs. At least, not on purpose. In one end of the house, the neighbor's signal is stronger than the one inside our own house (the point at which it's farthest away from our router), and I'm apt to find that my laptop has switched over to their signal.

I understand what you are saying about it being available to anyone driving by, but it really is more complicated than that. Someone would need to purposely sit in my driveway and hack the system. Our signal isn't all that strong, wheras the other unsecured connections in the neighborhood do appear to be quite strong, since they give me more bars than our own signal does in certain spots within the house. So, while I know that it's possible for someone to snag our information, I don't think it especially likely. And not that I want to share our tax return information... but there's not anything in there that I think anyone could use to steal from us. Someone would need to be specifically tapping us at that exact time (and we always seem to file extensions, so they'd be waiting until October - lol), but then they'd just know how much we made and how much we gave, kwim? Our checking account info is in Quicken, but I don't have any account numbers there to identify which account it is - or even which bank we use. I do shop online, but I check my credit card statement frequently (online) and would be aware within the day if anyone stole our credit card number and tried to use it. Any time you hand your credit card to a waitress you run that risk. Anytime you pay with a check you're giving out your routing number and checking account number. There just isn't a lot of information being sent in / out on our computer that couldn't be obtained by other means if someone were of a mind to .