How To Stop Your WiFi Being Hacked

The most common way to prevent your wireless (WiFi) Internet connection being hacked or shared by your nice neighbours is to set the security level to the highest available. These days on a normal domestic router that means WPA / WPA2 256 bit with a very long password consisting of, upper case, lower case, numbers, letters, mixed with some of the strange character symbols. Disabling your SSID from being visible is also a good idea.

That should be fine. And for the most part it is. How many people that live on your road would have the knowledge and the patience to try and hack your wireless connection..Not many. Of course, if they did try and actually succeed the reward for them is a nice one. Free Internet! Yay! So we can see the attraction that some people might be motivated enough to learn how to try and suck some free bandwidth.

Most people know that even with WPA 256 bit and a very long password, and with SSID disabled, it can still be cracked. So what do you do if someone does manage to get inside. First you have to know about it. If you know about it and you notice that your Internet is very slow, the chances are that the bandwidth robber is on the Internet at that very moment. So what you want to do is log in to your Internet Routers homepage so that you can see your "setup" or "my account" page. Your routers website will be an IP address which should be on a sticker underneath the router itself. Once on the routers options page you have many features available. One option will be that you can see who is using your Internet connection (who's on your network) at that very moment. If you see a name or computer ID that you don't recognise you may have just found yourself the free Internet junkie.

All routers are different and some will have different options that you can use to block access to anyone you don't want on your network. The most common option will be to block the person ( computer ) from being able to see your network. So that the robbers computer will be completely blocked, and it will look to them as if you are not online. They will be pulling their hair out thinking "where the hell did he vanish to!". I know it sounds cool, and it is. And this will be enough to prevent that person from accessing your Internet connection for free. However, if the person is a bit more network savvy they will know that there is a way around this. I probably shouldn't disclose how just in case people find this post looking for the answer to that method of prevention. Remember, this post is about how to stop your Internet being sucked dry, not helping people find ways around it.

If you didn't bother to change your password because you thought blocking them from seeing you was enough, big mistake. If they know how to bypass that protection they can apply a work around and then just click "connect" and they are back on your network getting free Internet all over again.

No matter how many times you block the person if they know how to get around the block they are back online fairly quickly. So what you really want to do is change the password if you see that someone unknown to you was on your network. This way the person will have to go through the whole process of trying to hack your WPA password all over again. This can take some time. Collecting millions of packets of data in order to separate the IV's can take weeks. Obviously some people know how to do it much quicker, but not many. In some cases someone trying to hack your wireless connection will go through all the work of collecting say half a million IVs then when they try to generate the password it won't work. Sometimes this is disheartening enough for the hacker to try their luck with someone else's connection.

The best, but most neglected way to stop people robbing your Internet is to have your routers control panel homepage open while your using the Internet. This way you can see who is on your network at all times. If you see an ID you don't recognise change your password straight away. I bet the person will get so tired of collecting IVs for days, or even weeks then only getting 1 hour of free Internet because you seen them on the router control panel that they will look elsewhere.

There are a handful of people that do have the knowledge to make themselves invisible even on your routers control panel homepage, but not to worry, they are few and far between. And to make things that little bit tougher just in case, change your password maybe once every two weeks, even if you don't see anyone on your network but your Internet is very slow all of a sudden and your convinced it's not a virus or computer problem. Also, if your router lights are flashing like crazy but your not downloading or even using the Internet this may be a warning sign. A little flashing is normal but a lot of activity when your computer is off is a sign that someone could be using your Internet connection. Stay sharp and don't neglect your routers online features!