Wireless Connections Secured: 13,030
Total Attacks Blocked: 3,100,000
What do these stats mean?
Six Common Wifi Myths
There are 6 common missunderstandings about wireless networks, all of them related to the privacy (or lack of privacy) of your information when you use a wireless network.
Whitney: Why does a person need wireless Identity Theft Protection.
Wifi Security Guy: Again, if you use the Internet and you use wireless Internet to access the Internet, maybe at a cafe, or your favorite restaurant, or in your home or business, then you need to be aware that everything that you do can be seen by anyone in the area even if you have security turned on. And our additional security prevents and stops them from being able to see what you're doing
Whitney: You've told us about some misconceptions / misunderstanding that a lot of people have about wireless networking. What are those misconceptions?
Wifi Security Guy: There are basically six. And we like to call them wifi myths.
The first myth is, people say "Well it takes a lot of expensive equipment in order to break into a wireless network."
That's simply not true. I still have the 10-year old laptop that I started out with probably about 5 years ago when I was looking at wireless insecurity, and it still works just like it did before, and it can easily break into any wireless network that's out there. And again, it's a 10-year old laptop. It would actually cost more to have one of these shipped to you than the price of the laptop itself if you bought it one Ebay.
So the first myth that it's expensive equipment is not true.
The second myth is, people say "It must take a lot of expensive software in order to break into wireless networks and collect people's information."
And again, that's simply not true. The software is free. All you have to do is go to google and do a search. Do a search on "wifi security" or "hacking wifi" and you'll find the tools are available for free, freely downloaded off of the Internet.
The third myth is that "Someone must be a security genius, or a network genius, or a computer genius in order to break into networks."
And again, that's not true. The people that wrote these tools certainly are very smart, and they understand the security inside and out. But when they wrote the tool, they wrote it so that anybody could use it. And again, if you could download it from the Internet for free, if you have any questions, all you have to do is go back to the site where you downloaded the tool and ask your questions there. The hackers that wrote the tools are more than happy to help you break into any network.
The fourth myth is "Well, I set a password on my network, or whenever I go to my office they have a password set at my office."
That actually gives you a false sense of security. Because if you turn on all the security that comes on your wireless router when you buy it, it's just not enough. It can be easily broken, again with those free tools and with a cheap laptop.
The fifth myth is "Well, the hotel that I go to, or the cafe that I use, they only let certain people on and the way they stop people from accessing their wifi is with a password."
But again, it's a false sense of security because it can be broken into. And even worse, they give the same password out to other users that are at that same cafe or hotel so they can easily break in, or actually they don't have to break the encryption at all, they can see everything that you do.
And then the sixth myth is "Well I have Norton," or "I have McAfee," or "I use this or that firewall."
And those are certainly great products. They are wonderful, you need to use them if you have them, but they are only good for the job they actually do. And what they do is they secure your computer against attacks from the outside. Or some of them, like the anti-virus, they secure you from receiving an email, for example, that has a virus in it, and that's wonderful. When you receive an email and it has a virus, Norton or McAfee, they stop that from taking over your laptop. But they don't actually secure any of your information that leaves your computer.
So, those are the six wifi myths.