You don’t want neighbors stealing your Wi-Fi more than you want them to steal water, or electricity. In fact, it’s more serious than that: if someone can connect to your network, it makes it easier for them to snoop on their browsing and their locally stored files.
How are you going to close things? Luckily, keeping visitors not pleasant away from their Wi-Fi is not difficult and does not need a rating from you. That’s what you have to do.
Keep changing your password
By far, the easiest way to keep your wireless network safe is to change your Wi-Fi password. You need to do this by configuring your router, either unbury the manual or perform a quick search on the Web to find instructions for your particular brand and model.
Restart the Wi-Fi password to set the number of people with access back to zero.
Change the password to something strong and difficult to forget(you) and impossible to guess (for everyone else) and you have a clean slate as far as wireless network access goes. You have the drawback of reconnecting all devices and equipment, but it is a small price to pay for a Wi-Fi slate cleaning. Choose something that is important to you, such as a date or a name, but no one else can think of it, so it’s easy for you to get in and do so against unwanted visitors.
The initial password of the router is often printed on a sticker that is attached to the device itself, so changing it will prevent guests as spying party assistants on the security code. If the password is only in your head or in a safe place then no one else can connect until you tell them what it is.
In fact, this is not entirely true-some routers have a WPS touch (Wi-Fi protected set-up) connectivity, so that the Wi-Fi connection can be done with a press of a button on the router itself. If you are worried about someone doing this to get on the net, you can usually disable them through the router settings.
Check your router settings
While we have the installation page of the router open, some other settings are worth looking at. First thing, change the default password used to access the router’s configuration page to something else: This prevents anyone who can access the network to change the Wi-Fi password themselves. As you have noticed when you enter the router configuration for the first time, you need a password to access the menus, and a separate to connect to Wi-Fi, so changing them gives you maximum protection.
Related
It is also worthwhile to apply any pending firmware update, which ensures that the router is running the latest and most secure version of its basic operating system. Again, with so many brands of routers and models on the market we can’t give you the instructions for each, but it should be easy to do-find the instruction leaflet or a guide on the Web for your device and it will only take a couple of minutes.
Installing a VPN on your computer does nothing extra in terms of preventing people from connecting to Wi-Fi, but adding an additional layer of encryption between you and the Web, so that anyone who manages to access the network is going to have a lot of H Burn Time trying to pry around your activities (the websites you visit, the data you are sending and so on). While a VPN can slow your connection speed slightly, it keeps you much safer-just be sure to choose a reliable, paid service.
Finally, if your computer is close enough to the router to connect it directly, and you have a strong cell phone reception on your phone, you can disable Wi-Fi on your router from time to time, which can be done through the router configuration in all The modern boxes. No one will be able to connect to the Wi-Fi network if it is off.
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