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Superman powers in the wireless world
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In about one week the busiest shopping day of the year will be upon us. Bargains galore will flood your morning paper with advertisements from nearly every retailer known to humanity.
Standing in line at a local electronics retail store to buy a laptop for your child, you wonder what Wi-Fi technology is all about. You have read and heard horror stories about wireless vulnerability and cybercrime. You talk with the computer salesperson who informs you that in order to have total wireless access in your home, you need to also purchase an inexpensive router to connect to your internet service provider modem. Five-hundred dollars later, you walk out of the store with a nice laptop and a router ready to enter the wireless abyss.
What you don’t know is that if you do not set up your laptop and router security properly, anyone, and I mean anyone, literally from the age of seven to seventy could potentially hack into your computer and/or read any and all information transmitted through the air that you breathe.
If you had Superman powers, particularly his x-ray vision, then you would be able to see all of the zeroes and ones, the language computers speak, traversing the air waves all around. That’s why it is a good rule of thumb to protect you (and your family) from becoming a cybercrime victim by taking every safety precaution available. Become informed. Become educated. Become aware. Use your seventh innate sense when using wireless technology.
If you have Verizon or Bright House providing your internet service, then contact their service department. Your internet provider technician will not only install a wireless router for you (some for a cost), but also configure it so that the latest security precautions are active and in place.
Even with locking down your wireless router, be internet smart. Don’t leave your computer on when you are not using it. Turn off any folder shares that you might have purposely or inadvertently set up. If you are using a Windows-based computer, make sure to activate the firewall. Each precaution leads to betters odds of not being victimized.
Here’s a little test for you to try. Once you get home with your child’s new laptop, turn it on. Search for an available wireless connection in your neighborhood. I venture to say that you will find at least one, if not more, freely available and open wireless access points in your neighborhood. Heck, you could use your neighbor’s internet connection free of charge and disconnect your own service if you wanted to. But I wouldn’t advise it.
Wi-Fi security issues are real. Becoming informed and educated about this advancing technology is worth the amount of time you invest in researching it. Time is money and not protecting your household could equate to not only financial loss, but identity theft, too.
Despite our nation’s economic state, technology will continue to advance in an astounding, superman-like fashion. Here’s a great example. Wi-Fi is making its way into automobiles. You don’t even need a pair of 3-D glasses to see the zeroes and ones floating around you in the comforts of your own automobile. Soon there will be laws against someone surfing the net while driving a motorized vehicle. Don’t think it’s possible? The same was once said about texting while driving.
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