Some Tips To Protect Your WiFi Form Hacker's
Set up a password - or even better - an encryption key
From there, it’s usually as simple as going to the security settings for your router and activating an encrypted password called a WEP or WPA key. This is presented in the form of a long chain of letters and numbers that the router can generate for you. You can specify a password of your own, but the router’s generated key is a much stronger encryption than using a password someone might be able to guess. Most modern computers will save passwords when you connect to your home Wi-Fi network, so you shouldn’t need to specify the network password again when signing onto the Internet, unless something gets reset.
Turn on MAC address filtering and router firewalls
While it is absolutely essential to use a password or encryption key to keep your Wi-Fi network secure, there are a number of other easy steps to make it even more protected.
In order to set MAC addresses, you’ll need to have the devices you want to be able to use on your network connected so you can see their addresses in the router’s “MAC Address” section. There, you can usually just click a button that turns on the router’s MAC limiting setting, and then select which addresses are allowed access to the network.
Most routers also have an internal firewall program you can enable from the settings menu. This is anti-hacking software that makes a network more difficult to access from the outside, and turning it on is generally really easy. It’s also a good idea to protect your computers and devices with firewall software (Windows has one built in, but it’s not a bad idea to invest in better ones) that you can buy commercially to protect your data even further.
There is a slight inconvenience with MAC address filters, as they can complicate things whenever you want to add a new device to your network. So if your wife's cousin wants to connect to the network, for instance, you'll need to go back and add his MAC address to the router's list. Of course, this is a small price to pay for added security.
Change your network’s SSID and make it invisible for everyone
From within the same settings menus that you adjusted the MAC settings and turned on your encryption key, you can also set whether your Wi-Fi network is “discoverable.” This means that the router won’t broadcast its ID information (called the SSID) over the air for other devices to lock onto. Only devices that know to look for the router, like the ones you’ve already authorized to connect to it, will be able to use your connection.
Assign Unique IP addresses to your devices
This gets a bit technical, but like the MAC address filtering, it’s not nearly as complex as it at first seems. Each device that connects to the Internet does so using what’s called an IP address. Most networks use a system called “dynamic IP addresses,” which means that every time you connect to your network, the system assigns a temporary IP address to your system. That’s easy, but it also means anyone jacking into your network can get a temporary address just as easily as you can.Instead, look for a tab in your router’s setup menu that lets you set “static IP addresses.” Like MAC filtering, you should be able to see the addresses of your devices at the moment; write them down, or specify a series of numbers to the router when you’re prompted to. These look complex (they’re usually long, like the 192.168.1.1 address), but that doesn’t mean they have to be complicated. You can actually set addresses with the same sets of numbers up front, but alter the numbers at the end to keep them consistent and easy to remember for you, but more difficult for intruders to access.
Once you set static IP addresses, you’ll have to use the numbers you wrote down on your computers when they try to connect to the network. In your Network Settings, you can specify a device’s IP address so that it always uses the same number, then you can tell your router to only allow device’s using those specified addresses to connect. While the MAC filtering will keep out some less in-the-know network jumpers, more complex hackers can get around that technology; they’ll have more trouble with your static, filtered IP addresses.
5. Avoid open, unprotected Wi-Fi networks
“Free Public Wi-Fi,” for example, is a network that will often pop up in public places when you’re searching for a network. Don’t connect to it, though, as it isn’t really a free public network, and could very well be a quick and easy way for someone with ill intentions to get access to your computer.
For the most part, the best thing you can do is avoid open networks you don’t trust whenever possible. If you do decide to access an open network, limit what you do on it. Don’t access sensitive websites or use important data like your bank passwords while attached to the network. You should also take steps to keep your computer from saving sensitive Internet information that could be accessed later, like a history or cookies cache. These are bits of data your web browser saves from websites to make accessing them easier later. When you tell a website to save your password, for example, it leaves a “cookie,” or small program, on your browser for use later. You can easily clear these from your browser’s settings menu.
These are simple steps you can take to protect your network, your data and your privacy, but the technical aspect often frightens off people who aren’t familiar with their Internet hardware. Trust us when we say that it’s usually less complicated than it appears. Consult your router’s manual if you need to, and look for the keywords in your router’s settings menu: things like “encryption key,” “firewall,” “disabling broadcasting and IP” and “MAC address filters” are good. Once you set them up and write the numbers down, you should be able to breathe a little easier knowing your access to the Internet is protected.
