I don’t believe I’m clear on what Google did, but I do have an analogy that works for me on unprotected networks.
I’m walking down the sidewalk. Someone has left a chair sitting by the curb. I’m feeling a little tired, so I sit down for a rest.
Suddenly the police and the homeowner come screaming up and I’m arrested for breaking and entering, on the interesting theory that if the chair had been in his dining room that’s the only way I could have gotten to it.
But, of course, the whole point is that the chair wasn’t in his dining room, it was on the curb.
Moral: If you don’t want someone to sit in your chair, keep it in the dining room. If you set it out on the curb, expect others to sit down.
OTOH, if someone has even the weakest protection on their network, breaking in is IMO just as much a crime as entering a home where someone left the front door open.
I like your analogy. Works for me.
Seems to me that plugging a wireless router-switch into your DSL or cable modem without setting up the security would be like having a 100’ cord on your telephone and putting it on an apple crate next to your lawn chair by the curb: an invitation to some to sit down and make a call, or like leaving the keys in your car in the driveway. Someone without a Midwestern sense of property might think it was a standing invitation.
Perhaps the analogy is that you have a rural mail box on the roadside and you left the door the open which allows someone with the latest technology to read and copy your mail without opening the envelopes.
It’s a perfect analogy. I like it.