Protecting your Wi-Fi connection
When you connect to the Internet through a wireless access point, you are using radio transmitters to send data between the access point and your computer. Anybody else with a Wi-Fi–enabled computer or a specialized radio receiver can also receive those signals. Unless you protect your Wi-Fi network, anybody with a Wi-Fi network interface can use it to connect to the Internet and possibly open files on your own computers.
In many neighborhoods and business districts, as many as a dozen or more different Wi-Fi signals are floating around. Most of my neighbors have turned on their access points’ security features, so it’s a lot more difficult to grab an unauthorized connection from any of them than to break into a network through an unsecured access point.
There are methods out there for cracking Wi-Fi encryption, but most intruders look for an unsecured network rather than taking the time to break through encryption. However, no wireless network is totally secure without additional tools, so your best defense is to make your wireless network more secure and more difficult to crack than the one across the street.
Most Wi-Fi access points support two types of security: encryption and access control. The exact procedure for turning on these features is different for each make and model of access point, so you have to consult the manual supplied with your access point to learn how to set them for your network.
When you install a Wi-Fi access point, remember to use a network SSID name that doesn’t tell a snooper who you are, and to turn off SSID broadcast. And don’t forget to change the access point’s default password, which is widely known, and often the same on hundreds of thousands of units. The manual supplied with your access point or base station contains the specific instructions for making these changes.
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Tags: Wi-Fi
