People don't realise the danger they put themselves in when they stick this equipment online. We all know because we're technologically literate but the average person sees WiFi like magic. My own wife once asked me if she would be able to take her laptop to a friends house and receive our WiFi signal there.. several miles away.
Average joes just don't "get" it. And really should they have to? - It is my opinion that we have already enough things to worry about in our daily lives from being able to cook hundreds of meals, learn to drive, learn to operate all the appliances. All things we just take for granted like knowing how to use an elevator/lift. At some point you have to just defer to others.
How many of us knows how to make a candle from scratch? or churn butter? - At some point we said let someone else worry about it, we'll just buy those things in a shop and there are regulations in place to make sure that the butter we buy isn't contaminated with ecoli etc
This same sort of thing needs to be done with technology. Companies like Virgin Media that put out devices must have a baseline of security that anyone can buy it, plug it in and be secure from day one.
My company several years ago produced a home hub for a saudi ISP and in ours we generated a random password the very first time you powered it on and it was presented to the user using a captive portal the first time they opened a web browser. As soon as that message was displayed to a user the WiFi password system was setup on the router automatically.
The screen said to the user, this is your WiFi password, save it somewhere and use it on all your devices. Captive portals like that are not new technology. ISP's and general internet connected device manufacturers are so incredibly lazy it's frustrating to see them put in such little effort.
<- End of my rant lol
