People aren't inherently stupid, but we have a lot of people who know nothing or very little about LANs and security, who are relying on the knowledge of the people who seel them the product to pass the knowledge along. However..... many of the sellers are interested in one thing rather than ensuring that the customer is fully informed "Here, you set it up, plug it in, power it up, and tada! you're golden! Cash, card or debit?"

Also, the manufacturers sell the product with no defaults in anticipation that the security settings will be set up by the user. Same premise -- takes time, time is money....

Same thing with firewalls and antivirus programs - just a default checkmark in "Enable Internet Firewall" would save so much time and $ for the average user.
Unless they use Linux :)

Err - yeah it's the people's fault. Nothing to do with hardware and software vendors releasing crappy, buggy, insecure and hard to install products. Nothing to do with an industry that in the main values features and complexity over ease of use.

You probably work for linksys.

I happen to like having my home network unsecured. It allows me to share my broadband easily with my neighbors and any potential driveby's. They might be hackers, but then I really don't care. I have Mac's on my network, and thus already secure and safe. If someone wants to drive up to my house and sniff the packets, then more power to them.