But as more people enjoy the ability to carry their laptops anywhere in the house and connect to the Internet without wires, so does the ease of hackers to access home computers that are unprotected.

John Shovic, a cybersecurity expert and professor at Eastern Washington University says half of all home wireless networks are vulnerable to hackers or bandwidth freeloaders because the wireless signals have not been encrypted.

KOMO 4 News went on a "wardrive" with Shovic to see if Shovic's prediction was true. We picked a random middle class neighborhood in Bellevue and drove around to see what we could find.

Using a regular laptop PC, running Network Stumbler -a free downloadable piece of software - an external 802.11G antenna and a GPS device to track our progress, our numbers showed Shovic's prediction to be true.

"It appears every third house on average has a wireless network and roughly half are open," says Shovic.

Which means the open networks are vulnerable to someone with a laptop and an off-the-shelf wireless card. That person could tap into the homeowners' Internet connection and possibly into the homeowners' computer if the computer isn't protected by a firewall.

Anybody -- even your neighbor who isn't a hacker -- could easily access your network.

But you can protect your wireless network with a few simple steps:

Use Encryption

Encryption is a security feature in your operating system that translates data into a secret code that only another computer with the same encryption can understand.

There are two main standards: (WEP) Wired Equivalent Privacy and (WPA) Wi-Fi protected access. If you are using Windows, with your wireless router connected and powered up, simply go into your control panel and find your Network Settings.

Find your network name and click on WEP or WPA encryption. Create a password and hit apply. Make sure the computers you want to connect to your network encrypt their signal with the same password.

Change Your Network Name

In the same network control panel, change the (SSID) service set identifier to something other than your name and or address. This is the wireless network name that will appear on everyone's computer that tries to connect with you.

Hackers often look for names that are preset at the factory such as Netgear or Linksys. Hackers know the default presets and can easily access you network and steal your bandwidth and could be easily hacked.