Have you heard of WiGLE?
WiGLE is the “Wireless Geographic Logging Engine", and they “consolidate location and information of wireless networks world-wide to a central database, and have user-friendly java, windows, and web applications that can map, query and update the database via the web,” according to their website. And right now they have mapped an astounding 2.8 million wireless networks worldwide. You read that right. Two point eight million wireless networks are in the WiGLE database. What are these networks? One of them COULD be your home network. It’s a site put together by wardrivers (you know…those folks who drive around with wireless network scanners trying to find wi-fi spots).
WiGLE offers an online map lookup function with which you can enter a street address, or a city, state, or region, and it will return a map showing all of the local wifi access points mapped to date. In addition to pinpointing any wireless networks found and mapped, the information returned will include other available information such as the network’s SSID.
I registered, and put my home address in there as the starting location to see what it would find. Believe it or not, I found THREE wireless networks, including the name (such as xxxxhome network), and the SSID, and the address.
Don’t believe me? It’s frightening. Check it out. http://www.wigle.net/