Using A WEP Key

Many people these days have a wireless Internet. It is quite a useful thing: if you have a laptop, you can travel all over your house and work and surf relaxed on your couch rather crunched up on your cramped keyboard. It is always useful too if you are entertaining guests and only have one home computer, and they have brought their laptop. This allows them to use their own system and you don’t have to let someone browse and possibly snoop all over your computer.

There are guests you want and there are guests that were uninvited. Your wireless Internet means that it can be scanned and picked up by anyone with a wireless detecting system, which comes standard on every laptop and computer. This means that anyone with an Internet connection can potentially scan and get hooked up and surf from your Internet.

This could potentially be a problem. While there are some people who are totally honest and just using your Internet signal to get on the Internet real quick and send an e-mail, there are others who are have a more malicious intent. Beware of your neighbors; your signal can only be picked up from a small radius of your router, so no one from the other side of town will be hacking into your server, but your neighbors would be easily within range.

Again, your neighbors could simply just be sending a quick e-mail, but it would asinine to think that all neighbors or people getting access to your connection are this honest. Once they are connected to your signal, they have access to your IP address. If they got themselves banned from a site that you go on, most of the time this an IP ban. Since their IP is your IP because they are using your signal, you will be effectively blocked from the site as well. Also, by getting your IP, they could gain access to your documents, browsing history, and other sensitive information. Your IP address is a portal into your virtual life, and why it is public seems to be quite a strange thing. Try using an IP changer to hide your IP and remain anonymous online. There is also the possibility that the person on your signal is an experienced hacker and could actually hijack your communications from their post, and use your computer themselves. This would be a hacker’s dream; a buffet of information they could help themselves to.

There is no way to sense if there are interlopers using your Internet connection, except that maybe if both of you are on at the same time, it might seem a bit slower than normal. Also, you are paying an ISP a monthly fee for the services and Internet that they provide, and this other person is completely mooching off of you! This could make anyone indignant. There are ways to stop these people from getting into your Internet and possibly compromising your anonymity and anonymous browsing experience online.

Use a WEP key. When these hackers look around for Internet connections to use, they look for the “security strength: unsecured”. This means that the person’s Internet has no frills and will pose no risk if they connect to it. These are the guys they go after. They avoid any Internet signal that would say “WEP protected” or anything along those lines. These Internet connections are protected with a long password, often over 20 digits, to get in. When they try to connect, they will be prompted to put in the unique password, and will have no idea what it is, and will be denied access. Hacker thwarted! If they somehow do get your password, these WEP keys can be set up to send you alerts when someone new has connected, and if you get one, search the vicinity of your house or your neighbors to find the interloper.

Don’t go unprotected in this rapidly evolving world of technology. Hackers and online criminals prey on those who are unprotected and unsecured. Using a WEP key is a simple way to keep people off of your Internet connection and keep your documents and other Internet browsing safe and secure.