Recently i have installed a Belkin wireless ADSL model/router. I am quite concern that will many more people going the wireless route and have no idea on how to secure their wireless network.
I recently saw an unsecured network which i was able to join and use the internet. I felt bad about it and stopped using it. As they didn't change the their SSID, i was able to tell the make of their router. Having been assigned an IP address and a gateway by the DHCP server, i was able to log into the router with the default password.
It felt funny. Here i am on someone's router. I can be nasty and reboot their router and/or kick the other users out using the MAC address filtering. I wanted to find out who they were and to help them secure their network but didn't know how to.
They since have secured their newtork with a key but i think they are using WEP.
I have just found this article about the danger of having unprotected wireless network. It talks about a spammer getting access to unprotected network and using it to send spam and thus hiding his identity.
For myself, i am using WPA and turned on and apply MAC address filtering. I think the most important thing is to turn off SSID and also to change your defaul passowrd.
I even changed restricted my ip address range and used a non standard subnet mask. Wireless is great but you have to wonder how secure they are.
This new USB 54mb g wireless key/card that came with my router/modem i believe is quite unreliable, it drops out once in a while. i am not sure if it is the card or that the router is having problems. i sometime found that i have to power cycle the router to have my wireless connection established.
I was tempted to use my old reliable PCMCIA 11mb b wireless card but then it can't do WPA encryption. Am I being paranoid? coz even if i use WEP 64 bit, i have MAC address filtering turned on. But the thing is that using a weak encryption, someone can break it and thus get access to the packets and will then beable to get the ip address and MAC address <- is this correct?
Also, who whould go to such trouble? All i have is an internet connection.
Another annoying thing which is happening in the UK is that there are companies out that which phones people up and then telling them that they have won a prize and to claim the prize they will have to call a number, which is a premium number, costing like i think 50p per minute or something ridiculous.
The thing is that the first time i got the call, i thought i was listening to a real person. It is a recorded message which sounds so real it is not funny. you can find out it is not real when u try to say something and it just keeps going on and on. I have to say, it is quite convincing. I had since received about 5 such calls. One even claim that it is from a radio station, radio 5 or something, i can't remember the radio number. That radio number turns out to be a real radio station but of course, the call was a scam.
It is quite clever really and could easily prey on unsuspecting people. I am not sure if stuff like this is happening in Australia.
People preying on the innocent just makes me sick. But then what business don't prey on the innocent? I am sure we have all been seduced by their advertising/marketing. We live in a materialistic world. It is very hard to get away from it.
Everyone or most people know that I love football. I play it as a player and also am a fan and follow it. I guess, i am concern about the amount of money player earns. This prob apply not just to football but to other sports and entertainment where people earn obscene amount of money just because the rest of us need our leisure.
How can football earns so much? isn't because most of us subscribe to sky tv so we can watch football game. We buy the marchandise and watch the games in the stadium. it is same with movies. we all go to the movies to get away from the reality of life. We read books and do many other things for leisure.
Going back to football, personally I feel good for a while if my team wins and if they lose, i feel bad for a little while. If my team wins the championship, I might feel better for a bit longer. The point is, how does it profit me if my team wins or lose? if they win, do i get a share of the prizemoney? what do i get from it? a feeling but what can the feeling translate to in real life? That's the point isn't it, that we want to get away from real life but real life is REAL.
Why are we so obssess with celebrity? I was just thinking. Imagine, everyone stop going to a few football matches and stop subscribing to SKY sport for a little while. I wonder what that would do to the sport? I am sure other poeple have the same gripe about how much footballer makes and how uneven the money is spread around.
After saying all that, I would still like to go to Liverpool and visit and watch a game at Goodison Park and maybe own an Everton jersey.
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