How to secure wifi from hackers and other dangers

In this day and age, wifi is indispensable for all walks of life, which has brought with it dangers. So learn how to secure wifi from hackers.

All of us who have a wireless internet network at home or work know the importance of how to secure wifi. It is important to keep the use of the wireless network protected under a password. We are generally concerned with preventing people outside our environment from using our network to avoid extra charges for data use and to protect our personal information.

This is a delicate aspect since when two devices share the same network, they both have access to information that we can save on our computers and this is a bit disturbing.

How to secure wifi

Why people hacks our internet wireless connection?

There are several reasons why someone can break into a wireless network, among which we can list:

The individual does not have internet access or is unable to pay for this service
To download great content and save your bandwidth using a third-party connection
Access websites anonymously
To send spam and prevent your IP address from being compromised
To penetrate a computer that shares the same Wi-Fi network and to steal information.

There are companies that hire individuals to send spam emails and therefore use a third-party Wi-Fi network. In this way, they are not compromised by the company with the network services that detect these emails.

When do I have to suspect about a Wi-Fi network hacking?

There are several changes in the behavior of our network that can let us know of the presence of an intruder in our network, among which are:

The network can become slow
Strange messages and notifications are received via email
The internet connection is regularly lost for no reason

How do I know if somebody is connected to my Wi-Fi network?

The most common method is to regularly check the devices connected to the network. This process is very easy to do:

Access the router’s configuration panel by typing the IP address in your web browser. This address can be found in the equipment documentation or directly on the device. The most commonly used IP address is http://192.168.0.1.
Enter the username and password.
In case you can’t find username and password or you have never changed them, you can find the username and password in the database on this website.
Find the “Attached devices” or “Devices list” section in this website, you will find the IP address for each device connected to the network in that momento.

Another method to know who is connected to my Wi-Fi network is by using an app for detecta ll connected devices to your wireless network.

Some programs and applications like “WirelessNetConsole” work very well detecting all the devices connected to your wireless network. So this program will show you some information about each device like:

SSID (Name of the network)
Autenthification
Signal quality (percentage)
MAC address of device
Channel
Frequency used

How to secure wifi network?

The best strategy to avoid somebody connect to my Wi-Fi network is very simple to use. It is neccessary to apply these next actions:

Use the security method in the WPA2 net if the router allows it. All wireless networks have available these next security methods.
WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy): This is a long-standing security method that it is still available, but it is not recommended to use because the WEP security is relatively easy to infringe.
WPA and WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access): Both security methods work with all wireless networks adapters, but they doesn’t work with old routers or Access points. If we compare both, WPA2 is more secure than WPA.

If you need to change the security method used in the device, you can get Access to Control Panel, find the “Wireless Settings” option and change the default security method to WPA2 or WPA in case WPA2 could not be possible.

Change the default password. Any person can search on the web and to obtain the router’s default username and password. You can change the password for another which contains at least 8 characters and it should get alterned some numbers, special characters and letters.
Change the default net identifier (SSID)for another when you use router or close Access points with the same name. If you do not change the SSID it can make some conflicts
Never use the WPS option (Wi-Fi Protected Setup) in included devices. Enable it even if WPA2 or a 50 characters passwords are used.
Active Windows Firewall, this will prevent some virus, malwares and troyans can use your Wi-Fi conection.
A good option to make a more safety conection is to enable DHCP and establish one or several IP directions manually.

All these methods will contribute to keep secure your wifi network.

Some ineffective options on how to secure wifi.

Routers and wireless routers oftenly offer another setup options, but they are not affective at all. For example:

To hide you SSID: Many others tools reveal your SSID instantly
IP filtering: It is uneffective at all. The attacker can use a different IP by refreshing his web conection.
MAC filtering: It is a more effective method, however the MAC address is sensible to be changed.

How do I know the ubication of somebody who is connected to my network?

A very important step to keep the wifi secure is to detect the exact physical address of the devices connected to the Wi-Fi network; this is a complex but totally feasible process. For this, it is necessary to install software on our pc or devices where to monitor our wireless security. So, one of these programs can be MoocherHunter. This program has some tools to detect hackers in real time. Also, the other requirement to use this application is to make a simple directional antenna.

There exists other ways to know who is stelaing you Wi-Fi conection. For example: Fing is an excellent desktop software used to monitoring payments conections; but also it has a free app available for smartphones and tablets.

This program helps you find out if someone is using your Wi-Fi connection. In addition, it displays in a few seconds all the IP and MAC addresses of all the devices connected to your network, including the make and model.