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bfurtado · Oct 19, 2003, 03:49 PM

I have a wireless network in my house with which I use to connect my Windows machine and my Powerbook. When I go to GO: Connect to Server: in the finder, I use to see Local MSHOME, and Workgroup. Now I see, in addition to the typical three, several others with personal names. I won't say what they are just in case. I know most of my neighbours. There are no macs and no wireless network near me. Is this a security risk to me?

Brian

CobraNT · Oct 19, 2003, 04:09 PM

Sounds like your neighbours do indeed have wireless.

Terri · Oct 19, 2003, 04:14 PM

Don't turn on your sharing and you should be fine.

So have you tried to log into any of them? Maybe drop a not on their desktop.

bfurtado · Oct 19, 2003, 04:14 PM

I have a linksys broadband router. My signal strength drops to 2 bars when I am upstairs. My neighbours to my left have no computer because I know them very well, My neighbour to the left are mennonite (and although EXTREMELY nice) are about one step above Amish when it comes to technology. Again, that's not a racist comment. We are all really good neighbours to each other.

Could my nearby neighbours have wireless? I guess its possible but if I can't get a super strong signal upstairs, how could I find a network four or five houses down? I guess it doesn't matter, as long as I am safe. I have all my passwords set but WEP is disabled because I was told that you can't activate WEP on a linksys router between a mac and windows.

Other than that, I did the normal diagnostic tests found at dslreports.com and my network is pretty secure.

Brian

bfurtado · Oct 19, 2003, 04:17 PM

Originally posted by Terri:
Don't turn on your sharing and you should be fine.

So have you tried to log into any of them? Maybe drop a not on their desktop.

Hmm, they're not there anymore. Funny.

Apfhex · Oct 19, 2003, 04:50 PM

Before I got DSL and a Linksys Wireless router, I had discovered that it was possible to pickup and connect to my neighbors wireless network (unreliably, as the signal was weak).

As soon as I got my wireless router I made sure to hide it and give it a password.

I still see their network (with its default name of "linksys") in my AirPort menu extra.

Angus_D · Oct 19, 2003, 05:04 PM

If you see other people in the connect to server dialog, that would imply that they are connected to your wireless network. This implies that you don't have WEP enabled. If this is correct, be aware that your neighbours could be able to snoop all your internet traffic, for example intercepting plain-text passwords (for example if you collect e-mail over POP3 or IMAP without SSL, etc).

bfurtado · Oct 19, 2003, 05:37 PM

Originally posted by Angus_D:
If you see other people in the connect to server dialog, that would imply that they are connected to your wireless network. This implies that you don't have WEP enabled. If this is correct, be aware that your neighbours could be able to snoop all your internet traffic, for example intercepting plain-text passwords (for example if you collect e-mail over POP3 or IMAP without SSL, etc).

I tried enabling WEP, but when my mac asks for the password and I enter the passphrase, it says its incorrect. Am I doing this right?

Brian

X-Ray · Oct 19, 2003, 05:56 PM

You need to follow Apple's procedure to set up the wep key and/or password. See here for info on how it's done the Apple way: http://search.info.apple.com/?search...n&q=wep%20keys

bfurtado · Oct 19, 2003, 06:16 PM

Originally posted by X-Ray:
You need to follow Apple's procedure to set up the wep key and/or password. See here for info on how it's done the Apple way: http://search.info.apple.com/?search...n&q=wep%20keys

OK, That worked. Thanks!!!

Brian