Any danger from people free riding on my wireless router?

[RayLopez99]

The other day, much to my chagrin, I reset the D-Link router and somehow I accidentally erased the flash RAM so it was set to default, meaning no password for the wireless. So for a few weeks I unknowingly had a wireless access point turned on and attracted a bunch of people from the neighborhood. I was able to log on the router, turn off the wireless, and from the log Isaw the people who had logged on (I recognized a few of them since they used descriptive names for their machines, such as MariaLaptop).

My question is whether as a practical matter it matters if you are sharing your wireless--can somebody with non-specialized software read your email? I don't think so. I think they would need some sort of packet sniffer such as Fiddler or whatnot. These are regular neighbors, not hackers, that's why I say this. As a precaution however I changed all my passwords for online accounts.

RL

 

[John Doe]

Regular Google Groups troll...

 

[Paul]

The other day, much to my chagrin, I reset the D-Link router and somehow I accidentally erased the flash RAM so it was set to default, meaning no password for the wireless. So for a few weeks I unknowingly had a wireless access point turned on and attracted a bunch of people from the neighborhood. I was able to log on the router, turn off the wireless, and from the log I saw the people who had logged on (I recognized a few of them since they used descriptive names for their machines, such as MariaLaptop).

My question is whether as a practical matter it matters if you are sharing your wireless--can somebody with non-specialized software read your email? I don't think so. I think they would need some sort of packet sniffer such as Fiddler or whatnot. These are regular neighbors, not hackers, that's why I say this. As a precaution however I changed all my passwords for online accounts.

RL

Why even use Wifi ?

Why not just turn off the radio portion, and run a wired connection ?

Paul

 

[RayLopez99]

Why even use Wifi ?



Why not just turn off the radio portion, and run a wired connection ?

I do Paul. But the wireless, when I reset this modem, somehow defaulted to no password and turned ON. Normally I have it turned off. Thus, when ON, it was accessible to anybody in the neighborhood, and about a dozen people used it to access the internet (I post in the Philippines, though at the moment I'm with a proxy server, and internet is expensive here, so people are always looking for a free access point).

Murphy's Law.

RL

 

[RayLopez99]

Regular Google Groups troll...

Shutup, John "D'OH!"

RL

 

[Paul]

I do Paul. But the wireless, when I reset this modem, somehow defaulted to no password and turned ON. Normally I have it turned off. Thus, when ON, it was accessible to anybody in the neighborhood, and about a dozen people used it to access the internet (I post in the Philippines, though at the moment I'm with a proxy server, and internet is expensive here, so people are always looking for a free access point).

Murphy's Law.

RL

Place the router in a Faraday cage. As a rough estimate
of what would be effective, look at the pattern on a
microwave door. You need conductive screening, with the same
kind of hole size. And that would help contain the radio signal,
without thermally insulating the area so well that the router
overheats.

The other possibility, is see if there is some other provision
for disabling the radio.

Yet another possibility, is see of the unit has enough RAM and EEPROM,
to support DD-WRT (third party code for the router operations). And then,
maybe the radio controls will survive a reset.

Paul

 

[Jon Danniken]

Yet another possibility, is see of the unit has enough RAM and EEPROM,
to support DD-WRT (third party code for the router operations). And then,
maybe the radio controls will survive a reset.

One of the nice things about alternate firmware like DD-WRT is they
sometimes provide a means to use extra buttons on the router for doing
things such as disabling/enabling the radio.

Jon