I am a newbie, but figured it would be best to post this under 'wireless security' rather then 'newbie security questions'. I looked through several other posts and tutorials and didn't find all the answers to my questions:

I recently got a laptop with wireless capability. At my house and throughout town there are several usecured wireless connections. I have dial-up at home and all of these connections are high-speed.
-Is it illegal to use there wireless connection?
-What are the security risks?
-My school provides wireless access also. Are there the same risks using it as there are using someone's personal wireless connection?

Some in the area are secured but I figure those that are unsecured are just people that took their wireless router out of the box, plugged it in, it started working so they never configured or put any security measures in place. If they didn't bother to secure thier connection is it there own fault, so I should have a free-for-all (or is that screwed-up to think that way). I read how crackers will setup Hotspotter or Karma to act as a rogue access point just so they can sniff your traffic (IronGeek). What's the likelyhood of that?

This is getting long so I'll shut-up now. But any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

BlackHatHunter