Is a WCF service open for method calls for any computer in the network by default?

Question

I have a silverlight web application and I am loading data to the client side using a wcf service. Should I secure the WCF service? Can anyone who's on the network call methods of the service?

Answer 1

Yeah they can see and access the service if they know the url.

And if they can see it, they only need to do a "Add Service reference" and they can see all methods available.

And since silverlight uses the basichttpbinding, it can work through firewalls (they typically allow http traffic).

You should secure it if it contains sensitive info.