The last statement, "As software and hardware engineers, if our defaults put users in an unsafe situation, where their credit and savings are placed at risk, th

The last statement, "As software and hardware engineers, if our defaults put users in an unsafe situation, where their credit and savings are placed at risk, then we’ve failed them, and we’ve acted unethically." is excellent. Unfortunately, it's not easy to get people out of the mindset described [plug it in, download porn, rinse, repeat]. Part of the issue is making it easy to initially connect, and as a corollary - easy to reconnect once you've changed settings. This seems to be the big issue. There is however a standard established for doing this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_Protected_Setup http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_Protected_Setup My newish dlink router supports it. There's a button on the side that you push to put it in setup mode [I think you probably need Windows for the "easy" parts]. By DEFAULT it is setup secure, and requires you to change the password. The trick of course is getting this pushed across the board.