An unfortunate local citizen here in my county received last week a surprising visit from the local authorities. It seems that the man had been using an unsecured wireless Internet router in his home, in effect broadcasting in the open, and that one or more of his neighbors had been tapping into his system to make illegal downloads of copyrighted movies. Industry sources traced the activity to his system. In order to avoid further scrutiny, the man was required to file a police report and provide proof that he had secured his router. It was fortunate for him that the downloads by his freeloading neighbor(s) had been limited to copyrighted movies and did not include some of the seriously illegal and repulsive material out there in cyperspace.
As all of you will know, if you use a wireless network for your computer it is essential to secure your system in order to prevent unauthorized use of your Internet connection and protect your data. This often involves nothing more than selecting the relevant security mode in the wireless device and entering a key. Wireless devices such as routers offer several choices of security modes, including WEP, WPA and WPA2. WEP is usually the common choice, for no reason other than it is first in the list, but it has a number of weaknesses, making WPA a better choice for its stronger security.
On reading the above-mentioned story in the local newspaper, it occurred to me I was using an eight-year-old wireless router with only WEP encryption in my home office. I therefore immediately purchased and installed a Linksys E2500 Advanced Dual-Band N Router with WPA2 encryption, complex password protection, SPI firewall, and data-transfer speed of 300 + 300 Mbps.
Moral of the story: Check your routers and secure your wireless systems.
[Edited to note that I had originally posted this in the Classifieds by oversight and requested the Administrator to move it here to the Water Cooler. My thanks to him with apologies for the confusion.]
