I have a wireless setup for my laptop in my apartment on a passworded line "secured network".
aparently there are several others in the same apartment complex who have wireless set up.
Even though my set up is across the room, my laptop picks up a stronger "unsecured wireless network" and switch to that automatically. Because it's not password protected, my laptop just latch onto that network.
I sometimes do online banking and don't realize that I'm on an unsecured network. Happened several times already.

Can someone pickup my conversation with the banks or even when I log into my emails and perform an identity theft?
I bank aparently on a secure website so this shouldn't be possible but those hackers are quite resourceful.

I am thinking just getting another physical line for my laptop if this wireless switching continues.

 

thanks in advance.

 

you can try to log onto their router by typing in your browser 192.168.0.1 (most of the time) and checking if they can see anything in the router. i would just try to find a way to block it. definitely turn of sharing if you have anything shared.

 

can't seem to get to that address.

also, general question.
so it's not safe to do online secured sites at places like Starbucks?

 

does it ask you for a username or password or does it just not find that page?

try "admin" as the username and leave the password blank if it does.

sometimes it may be 192.168.1.1?

 

An English military contractor took some leftover "Stealth" skin they had left over and put in on the walls. It blocked Bluetooth signals damn well. I read this from Pop.Sci.

 

If you connect to your bank over SSL (HTTPS), you should be fine.

Some web-based e-mail (Hotmail, gmail) will protect your login/password through HTTPS as well, so intruders won't be able to steal your identity. However, someone would potentially be able to read your e-mails while you're going through them (since these generally aren't protected).

Having said that, you'll have the exact same problems even on a wired network.

 

I really don't know much at all about wireless ethernet, but can't you configure your laptop/desktop/client to communicate only with your access point/router?

Or at least to NOT communicate with your neighbor's router (though I can see how that would be useful sometimes. )

 

You can set up WEP for your personal router and then for your computer you can select (or should be able to) to only connect to a secure WEP wireless set up. That way you will never be able to connect to any other network but you need to remember that if you go else were looking to connect to turn that feature off.

 

here's how to fix that:

Control Panel --> Network Connections--> right-click on Wireless Network Connection and select Properties--> Click on the Wireless Network tab at the top.

See the window that says, "Preferred Networks" ? Add yours and remove any others that are there.

Also, using WEP is good (or some other form of encryption). I also set my Linksys wireless router to filter by MAC address, so that way it only ever will accept connections from my wireless NIC card.