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Astphadel · Nov 5, 2006, 09:08 PM

Hi all,

I have a new tenant living upstairs from me, and we'll be sharing the wireless internet...

My question is how can I secure my privacy and make sure my neighbor can't see all my stuff...?

I've heard of things called 'packet sniffers' that can detect keystrokes and stuff, and I obviously dont want them connecting to my computer or files or monitoring what I do, etc.

I'm not very advanced with comp security.....and definitely not with mac, I'm a recent switcher, I just want to make sure my privacy is secure on the shared connection.

The guy is apparently a "computer guy" too, so I'm just concerned about him snooping around the network and trying to throttle the bandwiths or something....

paranoid, maybe....but I want to be smart and safe.

Thank you very much in advance!

ghporter · Nov 5, 2006, 09:18 PM

Ask in the Networking forum...

Astphadel · Nov 5, 2006, 09:24 PM

Hey sorry, thanks for moving to appropriate forum.

Can anyone help me please? Thank you

macintologist · Nov 6, 2006, 01:28 AM

Start the Firewall in the sharing preferences. If you only have one computer then disable all of the services. Download and install Littlesnitch to detect any unauthorized outgoing connections.

Assuming that your tenant mate is sniffing all of your packets all the time, here is what you have to do to keep your passwords safe.

First of all, any time you submit a password and it is not secure, your mate can read it in clear text. So because of is, any site where it's not secure (not https), use a different password than secure sites like banks, webmail and such which look like https not http.

If you use Mail, Thunderbird or whatever, make sure you have SSL enabled in the account settings.

Other things like torrents and video streaming aren't as imperative to secure unless you're downloading pr0n on torrents and don't want your tenant mate to know, then you should use Azeurus and enable encryption.

Astphadel · Nov 6, 2006, 12:15 PM

Thank you very much macintologist...I'm also concerned about privacy in IM conversations in programs like Adium/AIM....should I be concerned? Will I be able to directly connect 'safely' to friends through these programs still?

FWIW the guy seems like a nice guy and all but I just want to know that I'm safe from him snooping into my digital life.

Astphadel · Nov 6, 2006, 05:39 PM

bump/grovel/please

thank you

Tuoder · Nov 6, 2006, 06:24 PM

If he runs a sniffer, he can read anything you send or recieve over the network. That includes IMs. You can encrypt using Adium, but it requires th recipient to support it as well, and that may be a bit difficult. On this one, you pretty much have to be able to trust the guy. If you don't feel like you can, then get your own internet connection.

Astphadel · Nov 7, 2006, 12:37 AM

Thanks a lot....so i'm assuming anyone in the vicinity of the wireless connection can do the same?

f**king creepy....

thanks for the info guys

ghporter · Nov 7, 2006, 07:20 AM

Yes, anyone running the appropriate software can see your traffic. BUT... If you use WPA then what they see will be encrypted (even someone else on the same network will only see encrypted traffic) so your privacy is protected. I STRONGLY ADVISE everyone to use WPA with a very long, very complex (upper and lower case letters, numbers, punctuation and special characters) passphrase. I like the idea of boring the socks off of some nosy individual wanting to see what it is I'm surfing about (beyond my MacNN surfing, of course!).

Big Mac · Nov 7, 2006, 07:33 AM

Although it's better than WEP even WPA is hackable, but then again that could be said for a lot of computer technology.

Astphadel · Nov 7, 2006, 04:42 PM

Originally Posted by ghporter

Yes, anyone running the appropriate software can see your traffic. BUT... If you use WPA then what they see will be encrypted (even someone else on the same network will only see encrypted traffic) so your privacy is protected. I STRONGLY ADVISE everyone to use WPA with a very long, very complex (upper and lower case letters, numbers, punctuation and special characters) passphrase. I like the idea of boring the socks off of some nosy individual wanting to see what it is I'm surfing about (beyond my MacNN surfing, of course!).

That is *great* info.....is WPA easy to setup/run? A quick investigation showed it to mean WiFi Protected Access.....and then it seemed a little complex...is there an easy route to get this up and running on my machine?

Again....Thank You!

ghporter · Nov 7, 2006, 05:35 PM

The complexity is in how it does its thing internally. All YOU need to do is make up a LONG, COMPLEX passphrase (I do this in a text file that I put on a USB thumb drive so I can transfer the thing exactly), make a few settings (what router you have determines the actual settings you need to make, but it's all in your manual), and then put the passphrase in the router and the laptops. If you post what router you have, I can point you in the right direction for solid instructions.

I like Winguides' Random Password Generator because its output is very random and you can make it quite complex. Note though that some of the checkboxes are mutually exclusive, so play with it a while. Running it multiple times actually improves the randomness of the results too.

Astphadel · Nov 8, 2006, 08:16 AM

The router I have is a Linksys (Model# BEFW11S4) Also using a signal booster but I doubt that is important.

Thanks again, I really have no idea where to even start with this.

ghporter · Nov 8, 2006, 12:39 PM

You have a problem here-it doesn't look like the BEFW11S4 supports WPA. It does support WEP, but WEP is, to use a technical term, "crap" because the underlying encryption scheme is so seriously flawed that it's almost trivial to break. I strongly recommend that you upgrade to a newer wireless router, not just for security, but speed as well-the BEFW11S4 only supports 802.11B speeds of a maximum of 11Mbps, while newer routers support 801.22G speeds of up to 54Mbps-a big difference.