How To Know If My Wifi Is Stolen And What To Do To Avoid It
Did you know that almost 12% of Internet users take advantage of someone else’s wifi without their consent? This is when we have the dilemma of knowing if my wifi is stolen?
In this article, we want to share with you a series of tips to know if your neighbor is enjoying free Internet at your expense.
Luckily, there are different tricks to know if the problem in your connection is only yours or the fault of a “guest” who has sneaked into the network … Even if you can’t see it with the naked eye.
Do you want to know how to find out? Well, stay tuned, we will tell you!
Be Careful If Your Connection Becomes Intermittent
One of the clearest symptoms that should make you jump the alarm and become suspicious is if you lose connection momentarily for no clear reason. Although the failure may be with your connection, make sure this does not happen more often than normal.
So that you can check if there is someone else taking advantage of your Internet, the simplest trick is to disconnect all your computers from the wifi network you are using. Now look at the router lights: if you see that the LED continues to flash instead of being in a fixed position (always on), be suspicious! It may be that someone else is using it.
Watch Out For Loss Of Speed
You may not lose the connection, but it is suspicious that the Internet works too slow at certain times of the day.
People indeed tend to use the Internet more frequently in the afternoon, since almost all of us return home from work, school, university … This can cause a slight drop in speed, although this incidence is occasional. If someone else uses your wifi network, the speed drop will be very noticeable.
Also, if your connection goes excessively slow, the key may be that people are enjoying an ‘open bar’ of megabytes. You are paying for this ‘party.’ But they may also be taking advantage of your network to do things that consume a lot of bandwidth, such as watching videos, downloads, online games, and above all, at our expense!
Changing The Password Is The Best Solution
Once the presence of ‘guests’ on your wifi has been confirmed, or simply for security, the next thing will be to change the password. Some put very obvious passwords, such as their name or similar, and they are passwords that can be deciphered relatively easily and without the need to be an expert hacker.
In addition, router manufacturers often include default passwords on all their devices. You only need to know what brand of router you have so they can find the password. Therefore, be careful and always put a personalized one!
But we insist, do not use your name or the typical 123456, which is the most used in the world on the Internet. Look for something complex, longer than eight characters, and contain numbers, letters, and symbols.
We hope we have helped you guard your back against internet thieves with these tips. But, in any case, check the normal and abnormal operation of your network. This way, you can quickly detect if something is working strangely.
Also Read: Identity Theft On The Internet: What Is Social Engineering?
