Cleanse, Tone, Defrag: Wi-Fi

It’s invisible. It wafts through the air with all the pleasantness of freshly baked goods. Just, you know, odourless. Like carbon monoxide, but, well, not deadly. Digressed – it’s awesome. Yes, it’s Wi-Fi. That bless’d signal that permeates through walls (mostly) and straight into your mobile devices.

Wi-Fi changed up the game, and it still is, and if you’re not already a convert the below may be of interest to you especially; laying to rest any worries. Still, for those of you basking in all of its glory, this may also apply to you.

The biggest clincher for most is security, and rightly so. You wouldn’t leave your door open all night, so why leave your net access for all and sundry?

While open Wi-Fi is offered across many cities in shops, cafes and other public areas, it’s not all that safe. Convenient and sometimes a life saver, yes; but you leave yourself open to those shady types who have plenty of trench coats but all in one colour – beige.

Security software on your laptop will help somewhat, but what you’re transmitting is free to be intercepted by aforementioned creeps as it’s not encrypted. It’s frightful what they can glean. Where possible, try and use public Wi-Fi hotspots that frequently rotate passwords that some places will give you when you order your coffee.

Same rules apply at home. Do not have open Wi-Fi at home. Unless you live on a farm or the inevitable zombie apocalypse has transpired, then sure, go for it. Aside from the obvious, neighbours might piggyback onto your network and if you’ve got a capped monthly broadband allowance…

True story – woman passing through the street, walking with her laptop in hand. She spots a neighbours’ open Wi-Fi and, guess what? She sits on their doorstep. Yes, sitting on their doorstep, checking her whatevers. And if she was of the unsavourily sort, her browsing could have flagged up my neighbours account with their ISP.

People have also been known to cruise around neighbours with maps and put a pin or circle around places with open Wi-Fi.

Now, don’t let these put you off. The applications of Wi-Fi are immense and is as much the norm as it is to have broadband at all.

For the highest security, you simply must use WPA2 encryption. When you’re setting up your router for the first time, you’ll be given the option when you log-in to the router, to set the level of security. I’m not even going to tell you about WEP other than you shouldn’t be using it. Why in this day and age WPA2 isn’t just the Wi-Fi standard I honestly do not know.

And when it comes to choosing a password, be creative. Use all the characters your keyboard has to offer. I’m talking forward-slashes, backslashes, hash symbols. You name it. Splice them with letters and numbers and you’re laughing.

Sure, technically, you shouldn’t write down your passwords, but for this one, I recommend making a copy of it and putting it in a drawer; only to bring it out when you next need to put a device on your network.

Another thing you’d be wise to do is to buy a router that comes bundled with a hardware firewall, like the D-Link DIR-655. Plus, make sure that if you’re buying a new router, that it’s “N” enabled. Most these days will be, but this is one feature which soon will become the standard. “N” allows for a greater amount of data to pass between your modem and wireless device, and is a must for high-speed broadband users who want to share that lightning fast access between their various peripherals.

You can go one step further if your router supports it, and set it so your SSID is not broadcast. SSID stands for service set identifier, and is basically just a really techy label for “your networks’ name”.

While it’ll still be detectable to Wi-Fi Sniffers (yes, they’re really called that and yes, they do what it says on the in), your unique name won’t. It’s another level of optional security which I employ, personally. All it means for you is that when you first get a new Wi-Fi enabled device, you won’t be able to just select the appropriate network; you’ll have to manually input the SSID followed by your password.

Another true story – back when I was exclusively a PC user, I was setting up a new wireless network and when I went in to put my laptop on it, I noticed a rather “unique” SSID that was being transmit throughout my neighbourhood. While I commend them for their uneasily guessed name, and their blatant middle-finger to any potential trenchies, it just leaves you wondering what they’re using their Wi-Fi for.

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“Cleanse, Tone, Defrag” is a weekly column dedicated to bringing you the best advice in staying ahead in the world of tech.