Not knowing how it works doesn't change the fact that broadcasting the SSID is a key part of how wifi works. The only real solution is not to use wifi if you don't want it to be mapped.
"Ignorance is no excuse"? I mean, I don't know what the solution is if that's an allowable excuse. Google has to run PSA's on how WiFi works before they're allowed to scoop up SSIDs?
Additionally, I don't buy that to begin with, at least not as it concerns the majority. Where do folks think those other SSIDs (even if they don't call them that) in their list of networks come from?
Come on. There have to be some minimum standards of knowledge required for the citizens of a technological society, and I'd argue that "how radio works" is one of those things one should be expected to know.
The level of IMO required knowledge I'm talking about here is to know e.g. that water in your faucet is distributed through the building via water pipes, and electricity comes through cables that are inside walls. Even this basic knowledge allows one to infer quite a lot.
His argument was that you can reasonably expect people to know how to handle such technologies safely, not that he expects people to know how to build a WiFi Router from electronic parts themselves.
Using your analogy it would be sufficient for a person to know how to handle electricity coming from your wall or the plumbing under your house safely. And generally people do know how to do that.
Everyone who is regularly using WiFi networks knows that he/she can see the names of other WiFi networks in their vicinity. Therefore people using WiFi generally do know that this information is publicly broadcasted and available to be collected by anyone interested in doing so.
No one believes that he is the only person being able to somehow magically see the name of his neighbours WiFi.
I think the 'advanced' users of HN vastly over-estimate the amount of information that the general public requires in order to apply common sense. As a member of the public, I have no real need to know about the protocols the Internet uses, or how Facebook and the Web are related, but it is useful to make a distinction between using Facebook (social interaction, sharing information actively, communicating with friends) and using the Internet (browsing Wikipedia, looking up recipes on Google, accessing Web sites on my laptop or tablet by myself) when communicating with others.
In third world countries people historically got to use Internet services much later, with more limited hardware and in also in a very different way. (not on a PC, instead on a feature phone with a very small screen) So it's not surprising that they have a different perception than we do.
Frankly I don't care for the matter at hand about the perception and understanding of the Internet that people from a different culture might have just as I do not care about the Saudi perspective on women's and LGBT rights. We are discussing here what should be the standard in our societies.
