But what about all those signs that say 'Free Wi-Fi'?
Credit to Author: Sharky| Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2017 05:24:00 -0800
IT pilot fish sets up his family’s home router, and it’s working fine. But soon he realizes he can improve security by limiting who gets access to his Wi-Fi.
“The router had a feature where I could lock it down by MAC address, so I ran around the house getting the MAC address for every device and entered them into the router’s address table for which devices to allow access,” says fish.
“I noticed one MAC address accessing my router wasn’t on my list. I enabled MAC address security and that one fell off, so I was glad I locked my router down.
“It was a nice day, so I went outside on my porch. I saw my sister-in-law, who lived two houses up the street from me, shouting something and waving for me to come over.
“‘Do you know why my boyfriend’s laptop suddenly lost its internet connection?’ she asked me. Her boyfriend was sitting on the porch with his laptop, fruitlessly trying to regain his internet connection.
“I said, ‘I dunno, but I just locked down my wireless router and saw an unfamiliar MAC address, so I bumped it off.’
“She said, ‘But I thought the internet was free!’
“‘Like air, you mean?’ I asked. ‘No, I have to pay to access it over the phone lines!’
“She had no idea how the internet even worked…”
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