3 reasons to secure your wireless network

How many of us leave our house or apartment in the morning when we leave for work and don’t lock the doors or leave the garage door wide open? Do you leave your car unlocked while you are shopping at the mall? You may be very security conscious when it comes to your homes doors and windows and your car doors, but you may have left an opening in your home that could result in more than material loss if it is exploited. If you don’t secure this opening, you could lose your identity and in extreme cases your freedom. I hope that got your attention, because the opening I’m talking about is the lack of security on your home wireless network.

Today, I’m going to give 3 reasons to secure your homes wireless network. These 3 reasons should also be considered when you connect to the local coffee shop’s unsecured wireless network.

Privacy

In the last 5-10 years home wireless networks have exploded, and it’s happened so fast that people haven’t stopped to consider that an unsecured wireless network can be like opening the blinds on your bedroom window open and posting a sign in the yard offering free looks.

If a person can get on your wireless network unencumbered and have some basic computer knowledge, they can access your devices connected to the same network. They can also attempt to connect to your wireless router and realistically take control of your wireless network and prevent you from using it.

Couple the access to your computers with the tendency of most people to not secure their computers with a password and you have a recipe for identity theft.

Piracy

The second reason to secure your wireless network is opening yourself up to piracy. In the last 5 years, the US government along with record companies, and to a lesser extend movie studios, have started suing people for downloading “pirated” music and movies from music sharing services like Kazaa, BearShare, and Napster to name a few.

I’m not going to go into the intricate ways the government and your ISP identify “pirates,” but suffice it to say, your ISP identifies you by the IP address assigned to your cable or DSL modem. When you have a wireless router attached to your cable/DSL modem every device attached to the router, whether wired or wireless appears to your ISP to be using the same IP.

The government uses this address to subpoena your ISP for the account assigned that IP. If you have an unsecured wireless network, you have no control over who is downloading illegal content and you could be sued for violating copyright laws and have to pay a large fine.

Security

The final reason to secure your wireless network is for your own security. Unsecured wireless networks are susceptible to hackers. A device could be attached to your wireless network that controls a bot-net or spams people’s emails. If the powers that be track a bot-net or spamming system to your network you could be liable for damages and could go to jail.

5 minutes from security

Securing a wireless network only takes about 5 minutes to configure the router and 5 minutes to configure each device to use the secured network. The security on the network does not affect your network speed.

If your wireless network is currently unsecured, configure the security or call a Computer Technician you trust.