Following on from the BBC’s Watchdog report last night about Wifi security, we’ve been receiving a number of calls from concerned customers worried that their wireless router is not secure.
Here’s some basic advice and we’ll show you where to get some guidance on how to protect your wireless network.
We take your security seriously and, provided you take simple steps to make sure protection is enabled, you shouldn’t be overly anxious about your home network.
Wifi-networks are protected using a passkey system, generally using WPA or the even more secure WPA2-PSK system. The Thomson gateway 585v7 we supply is configured to use WPA security by default. This will work with most Wifi devices and if you’ve got one of these your network should be protected.
If you want to make sure your home Wifi network is secure then we have a guide on securing your wireless on our support pages.
Don’t forget though. If you do change your SSID or your passkey, remember to make the same changes on your Wifi-enabled computer or laptop too, otherwise you won’t connect to your home network.
Public Hotspots
Last night’s watchdog report focused on Wifi hotspots. You’ll find these at airports, cafe etc and are designed for anyone to be able to connect to them, often free-of-charge. This is very different to your home network where you can restrict who has access to it by choosing to use WPA or WPA2 security and setting the passkey.
If you do use Wifi hotspots when you take your laptop out and about, make sure that the security software on your computer is up to date and you have an anti-virus and firewall installed.
If you have any important emails which contain confidential information, try and avoid sending these from unsecure public Wifi hotspots as this increase the risk of the contents being intercepted and read by hackers.
Remember:
When you’re not using the wireless signal on the router you should turn this off.
If you’ve got any questions about wireless security please pop over to our discussion forums.
Chris
This entry was posted by Chris Parr on Friday, October 30th, 2009 at 9:46 am and is tagged with and is posted in the category PlusNet News, Tech News, WWW Front Page. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Do you have any recommendations for setting up a VPN as mentioned in the program?
Hi Howard,
There's loads of free VPN solutions out there, although none are officially endorsed by Plusnet.
Here's a few to get you started:
http://openvpn.net/
http://itshidden.com/
https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi2/
http://hotspotshield.com/
Remember, Google is your friend! 
- http://lmgtfy.com/?q=free+vpn+wifi
Oh I haven't just been "Let me Gooogle that for you'd" 
I'm aware of the options, just wondered if you had a recommendation of one over the other. I use Hamachi myself, it's super easy to setup.
Thanks 
[...] last nights Watchdog. We’ve updated our guide on Wi-Fi security in response to this, read Chris’s blog to find out [...]
Seriously.. why are people bothering plusnet about this? It's not in their remit. Customer hardware is the responsibility of, well, the Customer, and it's their job to make sure it's properly secured etc.
Please leave Plusnet to work on fixing the REAL problems - ie the dreadful latency on ADSL2+.
Here at Plusnet we're always trying to use clever open source things to make our lives easier. Sometimes we write our own and make other people's lives easier too!
We sell broadband, phone, VoIP and more to homes and businesses in the UK. Winner of 9 out of 11 Categories in the 2008 USwitch survey. Winner of "Best Consumer ISP" at 2008 ISPA awards. Voted number 1 in the Broadband Choices 2008 survey.
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