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I am still amazed every time I view the available wireless networks in my neighborhood. There must be at least 15 home networks in range of my feeble little laptop. Some of them are secure, but too many of them are not. And what’s worse, I can even identify some of my neighbors by the name of their wireless router!

Come on, people. You can’t count on honesty and discretion of strangers today. Securing your wireless router is not difficult. Basically you can do three different things. Encrypt the communications to and from your router. Hide the ID of your router. And to be super safe, you can restrict access to specific computers or other devices. Let’s review just how simple this is.

For all of these adjustments to your router, you will need to log into the administration panel. If you’ve never logged in before, then there will be a default login and password. Each manufacturer and each router model tends to follow a different convention, so you may need to check the manual or look online.

Once you’ve signed into your router, the first thing you can do is add an encryption key. This option should be available under “wireless security” settings. You can choose a type of encryption (there are several, depending on the age of your router). Double-check to make sure your computer can use the same type. And make the password something difficult to guess. In fact, it doesn’t even need to be easy to remember. Think up something difficult and write it down somewhere.

Another easy security enhancement is to stop broadcasting the SSID of your router. The SSID is the name that identifies your wireless router. Again, it probably came with some default value from the factory. The thing you should do is change the SSID to something unique. Try to be creative: if your name is Bob, don’t name it “Bob’s Router.” Once you’ve changed the SSID, look for a check box to check or uncheck so that you no longer broadcast the SSID. That will keep casual hackers and nosy neighbors from even realizing the network exists.

Finally, if you want to go really hard-core, you can restrict access to specific devices. You do this my entering the “MAC” ID of each device that is allowed to connect. MAC stands for “media access control” and it is a unique code for each piece of hardware that has wireless capabilities. All you do is write down the MAC addresses of your laptops, smart phones and anything else that might connect to your wireless and enter them into the appropriate place in your router control panel. Then anyone else that wants to connect comes face to face with a virtual “bouncer.” If they ain’t on the list, they don’t get into the party.

There you go. Your wireless network is now nice and secure. The great thing is that after you get it set up, you shouldn’t have to mess with it much in the future. Don’t you wish everything could be like that?

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