Hackers or intrusive neighbors, the external dangers to our home connection are many, here's how to defend the router and our privacy in a few clicks
Looking at them from the outside, they seem to be so harmless. But Wi-Fi routers are among the main dangers for our home network and, consequently, for all the computers and smartphones that are connected to it. As the IT news teaches us, it happens more and more often that hackers try to violate them.
The reason is soon said. They are the easiest channel to exploit to get to our most confidential information and, it happens more and more frequently, they have flaws and vulnerabilities that allow them to have free access to the management panel of the connection. From here they can monitor our activities, exploit the connection for their crimes and much more. Fortunately, an easy-to-use tool lets you find out if someone is connecting to your Wi-Fi and block them.
How to find out who is connecting to your home Wi-Fi
To find out if someone is exploiting your Wi-Fi connection you need to check MAC addresses, which stands for Media Access Control Addresses. But what are these MAC addresses? They are a unique alphanumeric combination that identifies a Wi-Fi or Ethernet network card. It is, in fact, the identity card of any network device, be it a computer, a smartphone, a printer or an IP camera. Thanks to the MAC address we can uniquely identify any device that is connected to our Wi-Fi network.
But how can we use this information to verify that there is no intruder? Easy, we can scan the network using applications called network scanners (among the most used are Angry IP) or by connecting to the management panel of our router and check the settings. Simply find the IP address of the router, enter the login credentials (if you do not remember, look on the instruction manual) and browse through the menu items looking for something that remembers MAC address or MAC address. Once you've found the item, you'll be faced with a list of devices connected to our Wi-Fi: if you notice any computers, smartphones, or tablets that don't belong to you, it means that someone is using our Wi-Fi network fraudulently.