# Do you secure your WiFi?



## jgoff14 (May 29, 2011)

Do you have your WiFi password protected? Do you not care? Are you the one using someone else's ? 

How big of a deal is it to you when others hijack your bandwith?

I have a neighbor that is a friend of mine and his dad is downloading the whole internet I SWEAR. He is at maximum capacity of his Qwest 7M/bit and keeps trying to get in to my network. It wouldn't bother me except he is a scumbag that is trying to freeload and not just in need. I know if I let him he would leech all he could off me and use my 50 megs to the fullest. That pisses me off. 

How hard do you think your's would be to get in to?

Because of this I just changed my WiFi SSID to a second order non-linear initial-boundary value PDE with the password being the general solution and numerical answer.  My thoughts being if you can figure it out and manage to type it in with the correct variables and order then you can use my net no problem.

Thoughts?


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## Perkomate (May 29, 2011)

i live in australia, our houses are far enough apart that the neighbours can't pick up the WiFi signal. We just have a simple password as our neighbours aren't @#$%holes haha


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## strollin (May 29, 2011)

I live out in the country on a dead end street and used to never bother to secure my wifi.  About 6 months ago I started seeing a neighbor's SSID showing up in my "Available networks" so I figured if I could see them, they could see me, so I secured it then.


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## OvenMaster (May 29, 2011)

There are about four different home networks in my fairly crowded neighborhood that my laptop can find. I use WPA2 encryption, a password with about 20 random letters and numbers, MAC address filtering (I have a laptop and an Emachines with wireless access), and I've limited the number of PCs that can access my router. I change the SSID a few times a year, and I turn the router off when no one in my house is using a computer.


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## tremmor (May 29, 2011)

As mentioned. Something else, I have strong passwords etc for wireless. I don't have that problem because many can afford it and wouldn't think about it. Never the less. Its a liability issue for someone to piggy on your wireless network. Say that person does and does something illegal. Maybe child porn etc. Its a trail back to you. Its your ip addy. best to do it.


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## voyagerfan99 (May 29, 2011)

My closest neighbor is 200+ yards away, so no.

At school though, I set my router secure with WEP.


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## Laquer Head (May 29, 2011)

Of course I secure mine, why would I want freeloaders using the net that I pay for.

It's not like its some difficult task or ordeal to add a password, no reason not to be secure!

Not to mention that Steam downloads and other stuff are slow enough on our bastard isp, I dont need it even laggy-er..LOL


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## linkin (May 29, 2011)

Yep. WPA2-PSK or AES when possible


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## Shane (May 29, 2011)

Yup i use the WPA2-PSK setting and regularly change the password.
Its suprising at the amount of un-secured networks around my area.


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## kobaj (May 29, 2011)

tremmor said:


> As mentioned. Something else, I have strong passwords etc for wireless. I don't have that problem because many can afford it and wouldn't think about it. Never the less. Its a liability issue for someone to piggy on your wireless network. Say that person does and does something illegal. Maybe child porn etc. Its a trail back to you. Its your ip addy. best to do it.



This was the biggest argument my coworker gave to me in his "list of reasons I should secure my network" but...

If its a router, completely open to the public, and you have logging enabled. Couldn't you very easily argue and show that it wasn't any of your local computers that was connected at the time and receiving said child porn internet packets? 

In the end, I don't secure my network because I hate typing in friggen passwords every two weeks when the dhcp resets or a friend comes over or etc. Not to imply I'm dumb or not secure: if someone is on my network repeatedly and using a majority of my bandwidth, I mac address block them. Meaning at this point: all my neighbors, heh.

(DDWRT is your friend)

EDIT: I should also mention. When I changed my SSID to "rootKit-virus.exe" a surprising amount of people stopped connecting. Go figure.


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## jgoff14 (May 29, 2011)

kobaj said:


> EDIT: I should also mention. When I changed my SSID to "rootKit-virus.exe" a surprising amount of people stopped connecting. Go figure.



That's funny. A new brand of security.

I thought I was alone in my efforts to keep people out of my network. Alot of you are lucky and have some open space. I live in a subdivision of about 200 homes. I don't know how many are officially in my coverage area by my laptop shows about 40-50 wireless networks available. Some with rather poor signals but you get the idea!


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## tremmor (May 29, 2011)

kobaj said:


> This was the biggest argument my coworker gave to me in his "list of reasons I should secure my network" but...
> 
> If its a router, completely open to the public, and you have logging enabled. Couldn't you very easily argue and show that it wasn't any of your local computers that was connected at the time and receiving said child porn internet packets?
> 
> ...


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## jgoff14 (May 29, 2011)

I never thought about that kinda stuff, and a few years ago there was a guy that worked with a friend of mine that got arrested at work. Some FBI agents came in took him away and nobody knew why. Turned out 'he' had been broadcasting a child porn site. In the end of it he was able to get out of it and prove it wasn't him and there was a piggy backer but he still had that reputation, fines, and time in jail. Scary stuff if you ask me.


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## Dropkickmurphys (May 30, 2011)

I secure my wireless at home, but I don't use a strong password for it. The signal barely reaches the whole house (completely solid walls), and it's not easy to get a signal from outside. But I do also live in a neighbourhood where the average age is about 50+ so I'm not too worried about piggybacking.


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## tremmor (May 30, 2011)

Me too. Residential and all older than me. No kids here except grand kids. 
I can see a few wireless. I contacted one person about 10 yrs ago and said you are not encrypted. Posted a message on his screen to call. Another activity but won't discuss. he called and set him up with WEP encryption.


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## NDSUTopGun (May 30, 2011)

We live out in a rural environment, so we're kind of out on our own.  But my parents set up a secured network.  I think the guys that came to install our satellite internet recommended it.  Otherwise I doubt we would need a password.

But yeah, it kind of sucks when other people are freeloading off of your internet.


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## wolfeking (May 30, 2011)

mine is password protected, and the password has 3 accented letters and the good old math problem at the end 6*7=42 (its a joke, if you get the reference.)


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## 1337dingo (May 30, 2011)

yep, and named it "the police" so when you connect it says "connecting to the police" hahah


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## jgoff14 (May 30, 2011)

I like that!


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## Dewcorps (Jun 1, 2011)

voyagerfan99 said:


> My closest neighbor is 200+ yards away, so no.
> 
> At school though, I set my router secure with WEP.



Use WPA-2, WEP can be cracked in under 3 min. And you dont want people who be crackin WEPs in your network.


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## Hsv_Man (Jun 5, 2011)

I use WPA-PSK as it was just default with my ISP not too worried about someone trying to hack the encryption in my neighborhood and haven't seen any listed computers i don't know in my network yet.


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