Wireless router sales have only been going up as the price comes down. More and more people are setting up wireless networks in their homes and office (and home offices) and more and more people are ready to take advantage of that.

By default these routers are wide open for anyone to connect. It is the job of the router manufacturer to get you connected, not to protect you. They get a tech support call when you can't connect but most people would never even have an issue with not being secure. So should you worry about securing your wireless network? What are the consequences of not locking it down? I'm glad you asked.

If you don't lock down your wireless network that means anybody with a wireless adapter can park beside your house (or anywhere within about one hundred meters) and get onto your wireless network. That means several things. One is that they can now use your internet connection to surf and download whatever they want. It also means they are behind your router so the firewall that is on your router protecting your computer from hackers on the internet is not protecting you from them. If you are running a firewall on your computer then you still have some protection but if you are sharing files or printers between your own computers on the network then it is relatively easy for any hacker to get onto your system and gain access to your files.

I have had people say to me that they don't care if someone else uses their internet connection because they pay one fee regardless of the amount of traffic and they don't have any personal info on their computers so they don't even care if the computer gets hacked. In the end, however, it's not about whether or not they are using your bandwidth or computer but what they are using it for. There have been several reports of people being investigated for downloading child pornography when in fact it was not them at all but someone who was on their open wireless network. Here are a couple of such stories (example one, example two). I also personally know of people who have had their computers hacked and the hackers, just for kicks, trashed the operating system which then had to be reinstalled from scratch.

So think for a minute about whether or not you would like to go through the time and/or expense of having to reinstall Windows from scratch and get everything set up the way you like it again. Then think about the inconvenience of being investigated for child porn. Perhaps you would not end up being charged (for lack of evidence) and perhaps you are not doing anything else illegal that would come out in the wash. But do you really think the gossiping neighbours will care about that as they talk about your situation? Is all of that trouble worth avoid the inconvenience of locking down your wireless network?

I admit the odds of either or these scenarios happening is small but it is also a growing phenomenon and if it happens to you it doesn't matter what the odds were, it's still a problem that can be easily avoided by locking down your wireless.

How do you lock it down, you ask? Ah, I'm out of time for today but that will be covered in another article.