Information Madness

Secure Your Wi-Fi Network Otherwise Mumbai Police Will

Hiren Pathak

Do you use wireless network at home? If you are then you should know that unsecured wireless networks can be used for illegal activities and your computer(s) using the unsecured wireless network are at risk. Whether you are using dsl wireless router or your wireless VoIP phone when you are using wireless internet service, you should make sure that it is secure. After the mumbai terror attack, the Mumbai police have decided to check for all unsecured wireless networks in the city.

Several police teams, armed with laptops and internet-enabled mobile phones, will randomly visit homes to detect unprotected networks. There are software available online that can help you detect wireless networks around such as NetStumbler. NetStumbler is a Windows Utility for AP Mapping. NetStumbler is actually most useful for pinpointing details of a wireless network, helping you configure, secure, optimize and discover. YOu can download the latest NetStumbler Software to find and secure your wireless network.

So how can you actually secure your wireless network?
If you are using a wireless router at home, you can go to router admin section and enable the security with either WEP or WAP2. There is a nice article on DailyWirelss which explains how you can secure a wireless LAN.

Written By: Hiren Pathak. You can contact him at informationmadness AT gmail DOT COM
Our valuable member Hiren Pathak has been with us since Tuesday, 12 December 2006.

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Vijay Padiyar
2009-12-22 00:48:48
It's a good initiative by Mumbai Police to identify and fix unsecured Wi-fi networks in Mumbai. But the skeptic in me says that this is just a publicity stunt and will likely fizzle out after a couple of photo-ops.

For starters, does Mumbai Police even have the manpower to mount this kind of exercise on a scale of a city like Mumbai? Secondly, will the cops just *point out* unsecured networks to their owners, or will they help in securing them? Because the owners may not have the technical expertise (or access to a qualified person) to secure their Wi-fi devices.

I think if someone could take the initiative to build a website that would have easy-to-follow step-by-step guides to secure Wi-fi routers for all brands of such routers available, that would be great! People could just visit the site, key in their Wi-fi router model and get access to a step-by-step guide which they can follow and secure their network.

And then the Govt. could simply ask the ISP companies to include a leaflet about this site and how to use it, in the statements that they send to all their customers. For email statements, this could be sent as a separate email marked IMPORTANT.

Regards

Vijay

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