Wi-Fi Security Tips: 10 Ways to Avoid Home Network Hackers

March 1, 2023 Floo

This story is part of Home Tips, CNET’s collection of practical advice for getting the most out of your home, inside and out.

Your home Wi-Fi network might not be as safe as you think. In 2021, internet crime cost Americans more than $6.9 billion. While phishing and scams contributed to the losses, personal data breaches were also significant. In many cases, those personal data breaches could have been prevented by just a little home network security.

The average US household has more than 10 devices connected to its home Wi-Fi network. From laptops and tablets to phones, smartwatches and streaming devices, the number can ramp up quickly, and each is potentially vulnerable to hacking. With so much data stored on those devices — credit card numbers, bank records, login credentials and other personal and private information — you want to ensure you’re protecting yourself from hackers if your network is ever compromised.

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A secure home network will help reduce the risk of getting hacked and having someone access your sensitive information. Not only that, it will keep away unwanted or unauthorized users and devices that would slow down your connection or freeload on the internet service you pay for.

It’s fairly simple to create and maintain a secure home Wi-Fi network. Below, you’ll find 10 tips for securing your network. Some are more effective than others at keeping hackers and freeloaders at bay, but all are useful in their own way. Keep in mind that nothing can guarantee absolute security from hacking attempts, but these tips will make it harder for anyone to compromise your network and data. (For more Wi-Fi tips, check out how to tell if your internet provider is throttling your Wi-Fi and our tips on how to speed up your Wi-Fi connection).

How to secure your home Wi-Fi network

Here are the basics for protecting your home Wi-Fi network. Keep reading for more information on each below.

1. Place your router in a central location.

2. Create a strong Wi-Fi password and change it often.

3. Change the default router login credentials.

4. Turn on firewall and Wi-Fi encryption.

5. Create a guest network.

6. Use a VPN.

7. Keep your router and devices up to date.

8. Disable remote router access.

9. Verify connected devices.

10. Upgrade to a WPA3 router.

Place your router in a central location

Strong network security starts with a smart setup. If possible, place your router at the center of your home. Routers send wireless signals in all directions, so strategically placing your router in a central location will help keep your connection to the confines of your home. As a bonus, it will likely also make for the best connection quality.

For example, if you have internet in an apartment where neighbors

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Cyclone Gabrielle: Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite world-wide-web network to the rescue for storm-struck areas

February 16, 2023 Floo

The complete journey of Cyclone Gabrielle from development in close proximity to Queensland, Australia to extratropical cyclone close to New Zealand. Online video / Zoom_Earth

By Ben Moore, BusinessDesk

Amid the fibre and mobile community outages unfold across the North Island, people of Starlink are reporting that their connections remained secure – as extensive as their ability and components held
up.

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All-fiber web network increasing to West Bend and Washington County, WI

February 9, 2023 Floo

The network, which will be TDS’ to start with fiber build in Washington County, will provide almost 14,000 properties and organizations with online speeds up to 8Gig, even though 10Gig dedicated connections will be offered for firms.

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TDS’ designs demonstrate the worth of fast and trustworthy net for family members, pupils, remote employees, general public protection businesses, and quite a few others.

“We’re fired up to provide our fiber community to West Bend and support the local community proceed to develop and prosper. This financial commitment of thousands and thousands of pounds of non-public capital will improve an essential section of infrastructure while improving upon residents’ quality of everyday living,” explained Drew Petersen, TDS Senior Vice President of Company Affairs.

Fiber net is considered the “gold standard” of household world wide web connections but its availability is scattered, as only 43 per cent of U.S. households have access to fiber, according to the Fiber Broadband Association.

Headquartered in Madison, TDS is producing a significant fiber network growth in Wisconsin with assignments in progress in practically every single corner of the point out.

Building on the community is expected to commence early upcoming calendar year.

In addition to quickly online, West Bend residents will get accessibility to TDS’ Tv set merchandise, TDS TV®+, which delivers neighborhood and national networks, integration with well-known streaming solutions, the capacity to commence reveals above, and cloud DVR. Telephone offers and support bundles are also accessible.

Encouraging the communities it serves is a core section of TDS’ mission. The organization will be lively in West Bend via sponsorships, donations, and other pursuits.

“West Bend’s best locale in southeastern Wisconsin, potent area companies, vibrant downtown region, and cultural features are just a number of motives why the local community is a excellent in shape for TDS and our values,” Petersen claimed.

West Bend joins a developing list of Wisconsin communities in which TDS has projects in advancement.

Founded in Madison in 1969, TDS has fiber community tasks prepared or beneath way during the condition, from Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls in the northwest, Brookfield and New Berlin in the southeast, Environmentally friendly Bay in the northeast, to Onalaska, Janesville, Oshkosh, Sheboygan, and many details in involving.

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Yes, Your Home Wi-Fi Network Can Be Hacked: These 10 Tips Can Prevent It

January 23, 2023 Floo

This story is part of Home Tips, CNET’s collection of practical advice for getting the most out of your home, inside and out.

Shopping for a faster internet speed?

We’ll send you the fastest internet options, so you don’t have to find them.

How to secure your home Wi-Fi network

Here are the basics for protecting your home Wi-Fi network. Keep reading for more information on each below.

1. Place your router in a central location.

2. Create a strong Wi-Fi password and change it often.

3. Change the default router login credentials.

4. Turn on firewall and Wi-Fi encryption.

5. Create a guest network.

6. Use a VPN.

7. Keep your router and devices up to date.

8. Disable remote router access.

9. Verify connected devices.

10. Upgrade to a WPA3 router.

Place your router in a central location

For example, if you have internet in an apartment where neighbors are immediately to the left and right of you, placing your router next to a shared wall could send a strong, and tempting, signal their way. Even if you

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Point out significant-speed world wide web network director

December 13, 2022 Floo

Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

States are shoring up experience in high-pace web networks by generating or increasing broadband offices to get ready for an influx of infrastructure income.

Why it matters: Guaranteeing that far more than $40 billion in new funding connects each individual American to superior-speed world-wide-web provider is a position which is slipping to the states — and they require enable.

Driving the news: Of all the task openings posted for states’ burgeoning broadband places of work, the “director” situation is the most typical vacancy, in accordance to info The Pew Charitable Trusts shared with Axios.

Administrators are frequently liable for crafting point out broadband plans and overseeing hundreds of millions in funding from numerous condition and federal packages.
The Pew tracker located 15 director-level positions posted, out of about 68 overall positions since September 2021. Washington, Colorado, and Maine had the most job postings.

What’s occurring: The Broadband Fairness, Accessibility and Deployment Program (BEAD), funded by the bipartisan infrastructure law, will supply $42.45 billion to expand superior-velocity online access by funding setting up, infrastructure deployment and adoption applications in all 50 states, D.C., Puerto Rico and U.S. territories.

State of perform: Before the pandemic, about 50 percent of states had a broadband office environment.

Now, all 50 states have some sort of plan, and lots of are seeking to increase, Anna Browse, a senior officer with Pew’s broadband access initiative, advised Axios.
“Several of these places of work were a single or two-human being operations prior to the availability of federal funding,” Read informed Axios. “Many states are selecting now, and rising the sizing of their offices to control the federal funding.”

Among the lines: States have been able to use federal funding from COVID relief offers to commence their broadband places of work or incorporate folks to them.

“All of this is type of escalating in anticipation of this big pile of funds that is coming from the infrastructure act, that hasn’t gone out the doorway however,” Lynn Follansbee, vice president of strategic initiatives and partnerships for broadband marketplace trade team USTelecom, advised Axios.

Flashback: Quite a few states recognized broadband places of work in response to the development of the State Broadband Initiative plan by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, in accordance to the Pew report.

But lots of of the offices shut down when federal funding stopped flowing, Pew observed.

Zoom in: Louisiana handed a regulation in 2020 making its Business of Broadband and Connectivity, and hired the initially government director for broadband growth and connectivity final year.

In about a year, the state devoted $170 million in funding predicted to hook up 80,000 spots to world wide web assistance through a new system, “Granting Unserved Municipalities Broadband Opportunities” (sure, GUMBO for limited), executive director Veneeth Iyengar informed Axios.
Louisiana was the 1st point out to protected federal arranging bucks from the infrastructure bundle, and Iyengar reported his a few-particular person office environment sights GUMBO as a pilot for how to

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Person rallies neighbors to develop their have fiber-optic network

November 26, 2022 Floo

A team of Los Altos Hills, California, people is standing up to world-wide-web giants Comcast and AT&T.

Tech-loaded but world wide web-lousy, people of the Silicon Valley neighborhood have been fed up with sluggish broadband speeds of much less than 25 Megabits-per-next (Mbps) obtain and 3 Mbps upload — the federal definition of a household unserved by satisfactory world-wide-web.

Discouraged by the acquire-it-or-go away-it attitude of online vendors, they designed their possess answer — and now this tony enclave has a single of the swiftest household speeds in the nation.

Scott Vanderlip, a application engineer, explained Comcast gave him a $17,000 estimate to join his dwelling to the a lot quicker world wide web company at a neighbor’s property.

“You received to be kidding me – I can see it on the pole from my driveway,” Vanderlip claimed, remembering his reaction to Comcast’s quote.

So the self-described “town rebel” jumped at the likelihood to companion with a startup net provider service provider called Subsequent Stage Networks. If Vanderlip could rally a couple of neighbors ready to make investments a pair thousand bucks, Subsequent Degree would get them incredibly rapidly online.

That was in 2017. Now, Vanderlip is president of the Los Altos Hills Group Fiber Association, which supplies tremendous-rapidly speeds — up to 10 Gigabits-for each-next add and download — to its around 40 association customers, letting them transfer enormous information and load webpages in the click on of a personal computer mouse, Vanderlip claimed. That’s 125 situations a lot quicker than the average obtain pace in Santa Clara County.

The status quo of broadband interaction — the passing of huge quantities of info from one area to one more at the identical time — utilizes phone wires or copper coaxial cables owned by significant firms like Comcast, Spectrum and AT&T.

This copper-based online is all which is out there to virtually 60% of the properties in the United States, in accordance to the Fiber Broadband Affiliation. Four in 10 older people earning considerably less than $30,000 a yr did not have broadband world-wide-web accessibility at home in 2021, in accordance to Pew surveys. And several Americans have no internet at all.

“We just can’t preserve begging the Comcasts and the AT&Ts of the entire world to build out a network that assures everybody in our group has (world-wide-web) that is dependable and very affordable,” reported Sean Gonsalves, who works on neighborhood broadband networks at the Institute for Neighborhood Self Reliance.

Specialists say tremendous-speedy fiber optic cables are the upcoming of broadband. As an alternative of utilizing energy, modest beams of gentle bounce down the main of glass or plastic fiber optic cables, each measuring as thick as a stack of two sheets of printer paper.

Mainly because it transmits details by using light-weight, fiber optic online has practically limitless capability, Gonsalves mentioned, and its infrastructure is more cost-effective to maintain than copper cables. Most importantly, fiber supplies the exact same net speeds when downloading and uploading facts, this means

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Tag: network