Home Router Security

     Have you ever noticed that when you boot your laptop at a new location there are several open wireless connections? You will see "linksys" "netgear" or some other brand and they will most often be open, therefore unsecured.

     Now, some people will say, "what do I care if my neighbor uses my wireless connection?" It is actually really scary that people still think like this in this day and age.  The truth is, if your connection is open, anybody, including perverts and terrorists can use your connection to commit their crimes, leaving YOU to take the blame!  When a crime is committed on the internet, the authorities can trace the illegal activity back to the IP address which is issued to you by your cable company.  Just in case you don't think that it is likely that people you don't know would use your internet.  There are hackers, referred to as "War Drivers" who drive around neighborhoods seeking out open connection to use while they launch cyber attacks, steal credit card info or even download child porn.

      Ok, lets say that you have secured your wireless network with a password, you are still vulnerable.  If you used WEP as the option on your router, then most hackers can crack that in less than one minute.  If you chose WPA, you are more secure and less likely to get hacked.  Once your wireless password is set, you still have one more level of security to take care of.  You MUST set the routers username and password to ensure that some criminal doesn't log into it for you and change settings. Once this is set, you should feel somewhat better about the level of security within your home network.  Just as a side note, if you have a website of your own and you want some free advertising, set your wireless SSID to read as your domain name like I do.

      Ok, so you are ready to log into your router and lock that baby down, but you don't know how to. If you have a Linksys router, then open your browser and type 192.168.1.1 and hit enter. The IP address for D-Link and Netgear routers is 192.168.0.1. If you have another brand of router, just Google it and you should be able to find it.

      Next, you need the username and password, the best way to find this is to checkout this website www.routerpasswords.com  As always, if you have a question, email me at thecommongeek@gmx.com

Brought to you by Dennis Keefe, The Common Geek