Issue 41.11
You stop at McDonalds or some other free wifi location and take a minute to log into your bank account and transfer money to pay your credit card bill. What you don’t know is that someone else is watching your information and now has your bank account login info and your credit card information. They can now begin to steal your identity and make your life miserable. You have wireless networking at home so you can use your laptop in the living room and kitchen and hook up to that cool new wireless printer. What you don’t know is that there is a guy outside in his car accessing your unprotected, unencrypted network and selling child pornography. The first you know about it is when the FBI knocks on your door and confiscates your computers.
These are horror stories and they don’t happen to everyone who is not careful, but they have happened to some people. You need to protect yourself. There are a number of things that I encourage all of my customers to do. The first is to lock down their home wireless network. What that means is that you must log in to your router and set up encryption to make it very difficult to access your system and your computers. The old WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) encryption is very easy to break into. I recommend the WPA2 (Wifi Protected Access) encryption system. Nothing is totally unbreakable (just ask Sony, Citibank and the Pentagon), but hackers are usually lazy and will find someone else easier to access if you protect yourself. Once it is set up on your router, you will need the password or keycode to log in from your remote devices. This is a little bit technical so you may want a professional to do it for you if you are uncomfortable with the technology.
As to the public access wifi that you find at Starbucks, and many other restaurants and hotels, it is not generally secure. It doesn’t matter whether you are getting that information through your laptop, your netbook, your Ipad, your tablet, or your smart phone. If it hooks up to a wireless network, you are at risk. Cell phones that take their info from a cellular signal (not a local wireless network) are encrypted and considered quite safe. Even if the wireless networks have passwords, they are shared with all the customers so others may be able to “hack” into your system. That is not too much of a problem if you are just checking the news or the latest scores or even the stock market. However, if you access any accounts that contain financial information or that require passwords, a good hacker can likely pick up the information as it streams wirelessly through the air. This can compromise your accounts and give bad people access to your money, your identity and your personal information. It is one of the prime ways that identity thieves get their information.
If you take these simple precautions, you can surf the web and do the things you want to do on your computers with a large degree of confidence. But always think about what you are doing and always be sure to back up any of your computer information that is important to you – particularly pictures, documents and financial info.
Shaun McCausland has worked in the computer industry for over 30 years, 20 years of it locally with Bits ‘N’ Bytes and Musicomp and currently does in-home and on-site computer consultation, service, training and repair. If you have questions you can reach him at 435-668-7118 or through his website at www.bitsnbytescomputers.com.