On Tue, 2003-05-20 at 20:41, John M McIntosh wrote:
> Right up to the point where someone decided that having integrated  
> 802.11(or other form of wireless)
> would allow you to have 24x7 internet access etc to receive pages, mail  
> etc. Then the fact it's still
> in your pocket is moot.
> 
A little story to support that: I had an ISDN dialup account with my
ISP, XS4ALL.NL, up to ~November last year with a fixed IP address
(evrl.xs4all.nl). Then, I got ADSL and a new fixed IP address
(tai42.xs4all.nl). They leave the ISDN setup in place in case ADSL
goofs, so I kept the dialup connection info on my Communicator.

A couple of months ago, I logged in through my Communicator on one of my
machines and somewhere in the course of bits of system administration I
happened to type 'who'. To my surprise, someone from 'evrl.xs4all.nl'
was logged on as root!

After 5 seconds, the lights went on - it was me, because I don't use my
ISDN connection anymore from home the Communicator now has a fixed IP
address (and one that has been reasonable well-published). I was glad
for the first time that it is still a dial-up device and not a GPRS
thingy. And yes, stuff like this *does* make you think about security of
personal internet-connected gadgets.

Maybe it's different in the USofA, but over here in Europe, your average
device has either Bluetooth, GPRS or WiFi (or all). Somehow, it'll risk
being connected 24x7 to the Internet.

Waiting for the Personal Mobile Firewall ;-)