Wi-fi hotspots in Watch Dogs serve as unique opportunities to break through the city of Chicago's security systems and find vulnerabilities in the system.
These vulnerabilities will allow Aiden to access civilian data such as phones and laptops, through which he can remotely hack bank accounts and other sensitive information. In other words, finding these wi-fi hotspots will allow Aiden to steal from civilians and sometimes even complete mission-critical objectives should he choose to do so.
Ubisoft has noted that they often attempted to make the choice of whether or not to steal from a civilian a moral one, and not a gameplay-oriented one. Players will receive no Reputation bonus for stealing something if noone is there to witness the act, and things like crying babies in a single mother's apartment add moral shades of grey to the theft.
