How to Detect Wireless LAN MAC Address Spoofing

Hello,

I have wireless connection in my house and am staying near to the very crowded area, lots of IT sector offices are near from my house, the problem is that sometimes when I login to my wireless connection i found different wireless connections are available with my own connection, i guess i could use others wireless services as well as it may not be protected,the same situation may also happen to me,am also not sure about my wireless safety, and to achieve that i wanted to secure my MAC address and as well as subnet mask ID, what will happen if I will not secure my MAC Address and how to Detect Wireless LAN MAC Address Spoofing?

Thanks in advance..

An attacker wishing to disrupt a wireless network has a wide arsenal available to them. Many of these tools rely on using a faked MAC address, masquerading as an authorized wireless access point or as an authorized client. Using these tools, an attacker can launch denial of service attacks, bypass access control mechanisms, or falsely advertise services to wireless clients. This presents unique opportunities for attacks against wireless networks that are difficult to detect, since the attacker can present himself as an authorized client by using an altered MAC address. As nearly all wireless NICs permit changing their MAC address to an arbitrary value – through vendor-supplied drivers, open-source drivers or various application programming frameworks – it is trivial for an attacker to wreak havoc on a target wireless LAN.

Around here 80% of the APs are wide open, and I'm curious whether there is a simple look-at-the-blinking-ights method a homeowner can use to see if somebody is "borrowing" a little bandwidth.

My neighbor has invited me to use his AP, and I put together a working Bidi amp and loop yagi last Sunday (I'm a ham) that has successfully borrowed a different neighbor's AP's broadband internet.