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Everyone agrees that hiding your SSID does [u]nothing[/u] to make your network safer.

And hiding it can have at least two negative effects.

1. It makes you a poor RF neighbor. By hiding your channel choice, you make it tougher for your neighbors to select a free channel. This decreases the available bandwidth for everyone - yourself included.

Very few SOHO's (and believe it or not some enterprises) have more than WZC or Netstumbler to help them set up their networks. Why not make it easier and better for everyone.

2. It negates the possibility of your devices performing passive, as opposed to active probing and roaming. This can slow down or ruin your roaming, and even increase latency. It also clogs up the channel with more traffic from each client device on your network.

The AP is, most likely, sending out Beacons nearly ten times a second already. Why add more traffic than you have to?

You should have already followed the sound security advice of not using your name, address etc, as your SSID.

A real "hacker" would have found you anyway.

So "go vocal"! Help yourself and everyone else around you.