I have a little story for you, covering both a bit of advice and security at the same time. However, this isn't Access Point side security, it's the security you have as a wardriver

As a greyhat, I wardrive for the fun of locating what exists within cities and streets and to protect my city against blackhats and scripties. Sometimes actively scanning in windows, sometimes passively scanning in Linux. One I find an unencrypted (and thus unprotected) WAP, I pinpoint the location of the AP and thus the store/homeowner/company that is running it. My contact with them is brief, as I just notify the CEO/head of household that their network to the outside world is wide open. After handing them a summary of how to secure a WAP and who they should send this memo to in their company, I leave.

This way their network is secured, and it's one less WAP that idiots can use against the company. Greyhat == "lord of the ring" type rangers of the internet. Nothing illegal preformed.

I told you that to tell you this, so bare with me. There are some things you never want to access, or test. Even if you come across them, there are some things that are just better left alone. This also applies for unintentional access. Allow me to explain. You see, in Windows you have the unfortunate problem of the wireless card autoapplying the TCP/IP and dhcp settings to automagically attempt connection to the closest WAP it can find. This is bad, as you don't want to try (not even in a sense of password usage, but just the beginning handshake with the WAP) to connect to a WAP that you do not have legal access to. I relearned this the hard way.

While scanning a main street in my city, I came across the local police station. As always, their wireless network remains unencrypted (I know they know better, so I assume it may be a honeypot, but none the less) and thus instally throws a redflag on netstumbler. No big deal, I've documented them before. But wait... what's this? I see the wireless icon in my systray start moving. It's attempting to connect... to what? Low and behold, windows was trying ruthlessly to get a connection to the police-station's WAP. Not in a brute-force sense, but requesting an IP from it over and over again. Whoops :X I quickly shut off my NIC, renamed the network name for my laptop, and sped off. Scared shitless that their admin may have caught my consistant broadcasts to connect to them that may have been going on for a minute or two. You see, I had done a reformat just yesterday, and had forgot to turn off TCP/IP on the wireless card settings while wardriving.

Moral of the story: While wardriving in windows, unbind TCP/IP from your NIC until you plan to actually connect. That's the ONLY time you need it, as it's unnessessary for just the detecton of networks. Not only could this raise an eye or two, but could be viewed as highly illegal due to how Windows demands over and over WAP access. To disable TCP/IP on your nic card, go into your control panel and into network connections. Right click on your wireless nic connection and choose properties. Once in properties, uncheck the TCP/IP box, and apply/ok it. There, you are now set to wardrive without the worry of windows banging on everyone's door.

Have fun, be safe, and try your best to keep this in mind when heading out to wardrive.