There have been countless amount of times where I would scan a neighborhood and see a few unsecured wireless network. Most people who buy wireless routers simply forget to modify their security settings. Here are some suggestions you can do to increase security and protect your wireless access from prying eyes.
- Enabled the wireless security and use WPA Personal or WPA2 Personal. Avoid using WEP as it has been proven to not be as secure.
- Change the SSID to something that you can easily recognize as your own, but different enough where no one can pinpoint where it’s from. Better yet disable the broadcast of your SSID. The latter will provide better security, but when you want allow other devices to to your wifi you’ll have to manually add the wireless network to it.
- Change the admin login of the wireless device. This one is obvious but people tend to forget to change this sometimes.
- Place the wireless router somewhere in the middle of your home. This will give you maximum coverage for you and minimizes the range for access outside your home.
- If your wireless router manages your internet connection make sure you do not have any unused ports enabled in your Port Forwarding settings. Most newly purchased wireless routers comes with all their ports disabled in Port Forwarding, but it doesn’t hurt to double check.