how to find out if someones using my internet

gonzo127

i have currently (on my phone) just scanned for wifi and come up with someones telephone number as the SSID!

John_Gray

I've not met that piece of intelligent naming before, but routinely see people's names or addresses...

John_Gray

Another, and free, program to see what's using your network is the wonderful Nir Sofer's utility Wireless Network Watcher.

espresso

John_Gray wrote: »

I agree with the first part of your sentence. But surely "hiding the SSID" simply prevents anyone knowing that your router is at "23 Railway Cuttings" (or their real postal address - yes, it happens!), or whatever network name they have chosen, and shows your network as "(hidden)", or similar? The actual broadcasting and use of a particular channel is still visible, surely, and the channel won't show as unused...

Oh, and I forgot to say that the best wireless security available to us mere mortals is the combination of WPA2 with AES. (But of course hardwired ethernet connections are even safer...)

The point that I was making was that hiding the SSID does not improve security. Anyone who has the necessary software to sniff/hack the wireless connection, will get the SSID along with the MAC and passphrase presented to them, making MAC address filtering a waste of time as well.

gonzo127 wrote: »

i have currently (on my phone) just scanned for wifi and come up with someones telephone number as the SSID!

Yes I believe that TalkTalk are one of the ISP's stupid enough to do this, I have seen it locally here myself.

John_Gray

espresso wrote: »

The point that I was making was that hiding the SSID does not improve security. Anyone who has the necessary software to sniff/hack the wireless connection, will get the SSID along with the MAC and passphrase presented to them, making MAC address filtering a waste of time as well.

Yes, I agree with this also - but my point was that even though the SSID is being hidden, this won't hide the fact that the person's router is broadcasting on a specific channel. It's just the network name which will show as being hidden, or unnamed.

phoneguy

I've seen that with TalkTalk too - but wireless issues tend to be 'local' issues.
More worrying (and common) is the use of the telephone number in the dsl user login name.

When a miscreant gets into a router (usual thing, admin/[admin|weak] with remote admin on - or using a javascript csrf script and remote off) getting the victims phone number then allows them to undertake a number of impersonation and phone based attacks including identity theft. I personally think this practice, whilst useful and simple for service providers, needs rethinking.

jaydeeuk1

Change the wifi channel. I reckon its going to be interference - neighbour could have bought some electrical device causing interference, or simply changed ISP and the default channel with their new router happens to be the same as yours.

Theres a good piece of software whose name escapes me that will tell you what channels have the least interference.

debitcardmayhem

jaydeeuk1 wrote: »

Change the wifi channel. I reckon its going to be interference - neighbour could have bought some electrical device causing interference, or simply changed ISP and the default channel with their new router happens to be the same as yours.

Theres a good piece of software whose name escapes me that will tell you what channels have the least interference.

That would be inssider from metageek ....http://www.metageek.net/products/inssider/

I still bet it's DNS ...

phoneguy

debitcardmayhem wrote: »

I still bet it's DNS ...

I tend to agree.

I'm not a Windows guy, but I hear Netstumbler is also useful for seeking out interference.

http://www.netstumbler.com/downloads/

TalkTalk

Hi jamespir,

There could be a multitude of issues that can affect your speeds and data transmission when using wirless. The first checkw ould be to see if the issue is still present when using an ethernet connection and turning wireless off. This guarentees only the one wired device is connected, as per espresso's post.

If your still experiencing issues with slow loading of pages it could be a DNS issues and testing this by changing DNS settings to either Google Or Open DNS will confirm if that is the case.

If neither of these resolves the issue please feel free to tweet us @TalkTalkCare or alternatively you can contact us via the TalkTalk Members Forum.

regards

Mark
TalkTalk Online Community Department