Have You Considered Securing Your Wireless Home Network?
Yesterday I talked about mobile blogging and how I use my mobile phone all the time to write blog posts and check the other blogs that I follow. Today I’d like to send a quick shout out to everyone who has a wireless home network.
So here I am sitting at my son’s football practice. Normally I am using my mobile phone to check email, surf the web, write a blog post, check other folk’s blogs and such. However, today is a special day because I just discovered that some idiot in one of the houses surrounding the park hasn’t secured his wireless home network. (Actually THREE PEOPLE)
Because of this, I am able to SUCK HIS BANDWIDTH down to nothing by downloading movies, watching YouTube videos, writing blog posts and all kinds of good stuff. I am not sure how much this guy is paying for his High Speed Broadband Internet service, but it sure is FAST!!!
So anyway, if you don’t want people like me, robbing you of your Internet connection, perhaps it would be a good idea to setup a secured wireless home network!
The funny thing about this is that this happens so many times. I can’t begin to tell you the number of free places I can tap into unsecured wireless networks. A lot of the times during the week I have to pick my daughter up from highschool and have to wait a few minutes before she comes out… you guessed it, the school has an unsecured connection. It’s funny though becuase they control where the kids are able to go, such as NO YOUTUBE.com, etc… yet, they don’t secure their network. Other places include various businesses in town and other neighbors.
The great news about this is that if one day I go broke, I can always count on taking a drive to our local park and scoring a free high speed connection for the THREE houses actually that don’t secure their network.
The great news for you if you are reading this blog post, is now you know that there are people who tap into your Internet connection. So next time your Internet is slow, you might not waste time calling your cable company complaining about a slow connection. Instead, you should visit the web site of the manufacturer of your wireless router and learn how to secure your wireless network.
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5 comments
Good article Gary. Are you familiar with WarDriving? If you aren’t google it. For those that read this and don’t know, wardriving is driving around town and finding hotspots that are open and sharing with others. There is actually a set of codes that people in urban areas use to id a hotspot with a particular symbol.
People are crazy when they dont secure their wireless networks. It only takes about 5 minutes to follow the instructions in the router. I know in my neighborhood I have two networks I can connect two from neighbors. Mine is secure. I have told my neighbors but they dont seem to think it is an issue. They will think it is an issue when someone decides to be a little more malicious than downloading on their dime.
Your comment about calling your cable company is very true. I used to be a broadband tech for Charter Comm/NewWaveComm and the majority of bandwidth issues we ran trouble calls on were just what you said……unsecured routers and other people using them.
Good article
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I do that all the time. If I need Internet real bad I pull over to residential area or a business area with coffee shops and stores and use free Inter wireless connection. I once used Greyhound’s Internet service downtown, they had an open network while waiting for a bus ride.
I showed my mom how to log on into her apartment building’s tenants and share the Internet for free…
Luckily for me, I have an Uber geek/hacker/programmer/internet security analyst for our govt friend. Who sets me all snug as a bug in a rug. Though in the congested hood i am in there are 6 people with unsecured connections. We’re a 3 computer household here. two wireless laptops and monster box connected hard to our cable /net provider.
Last time my geek buddy was here I suggested he go knock on their doors and tell them then charge them to have it fixed, Instead he opend their cd trays, LOL what ever.
Anyone want a hamster mine is insane and an escape artists I just noticed he isnt in his cage. Lovely!!! its 6 am and I have to hunt for a freaking hamster.
Have a good day everyone.
Oh and thanks for the update on the cyber theme dude, I was banging my head trying to figure that situation out last night. Waiting on the reply from David.
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Well, Garry, you also have three extra IPs now to use for bookmarking, social sites etc for making backlinks!!!
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doesnt matter if you secure your wireless network or not, with backtrack 3 and the right wireless card WEP,WPA etc security can all be broken in 5 mins, i recently ran a test on my own network, i managed to crack my WPA on my home network, and had access to my entire harddrive using various tools on backtrack 3, and the scary thing is that there are tutorials all over the net on how to do this.
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