Not in the case mentioned as I recal ( Starbucks)l. If a company offers their internet wifi to the public then it is not stealing. Generally, these services offered to the public are doing this as a form of advertising because they usually have splash pages you have to see in order to use the service. I call them nag pages. Others, like hotels do require passwords that are given to registered guests; to hack into these would of course be stealing. Two weeks ago I was at an Dennys restaurant. They advertise "FREE Internet" You have to agree on the nag page to the liability release but deep in the fine print, they ask your permission to establish Dennys as your new home page on your device. Few will read that but click OK and their software replaces your favorite home page with Denny's Advertising. You have to manually remove it and put yours back when you are through with using their "FREE Internet" Nothing is really FREE anymore. IT all has a price to pay, just the free stuff is sold for non cash payment, either your personal data or your time to view advertising.