Caught my neighbor using my wifi for 6 months before I noticed

I was at the coffee shop last week and overheard my neighbor bragging about never paying for internet. Checked my router logs and sure enough, their devices were connected to my network since February. Has anyone else dealt with someone stealing their wifi and how did you handle it?

3 comments

3 Comments

claire87221d ago

Hang on, did you check if they actually broke into your router settings or just guessed the password? Cause if it's just password guessing, that's one thing, but if they actually cracked your admin login too, that's way more serious. I'd be worried about what else they might've accessed on your network, not just the internet. Did you check your router's security settings to see if they changed anything in there?

the_parker21d ago

30% of home routers still run factory default admin passwords, so if they got into your settings, @claire872, it's probably because they used something like "admin/admin" or found it on a sticker on the router. But if they changed your DNS settings or port forwarding rules, that's a whole different level of concern because they could redirect your traffic to fake banking sites or set up a backdoor into your whole network. I'd log into your router right now and check the "attached devices" list too, see if there's any weird gadgets you don't recognize still hanging around. Then look at your logs, if your router keeps them, for any unknown admin logins around the time your WiFi password went bad. Take it with a grain of salt, but I've seen folks lose their smart home stuff and even get their email accounts drained because someone poked around their router settings first.

logan52521d ago

Oh man, that's rough. Honestly I'd just change the wifi password to something like "stopstealingmyinternet" and call it a day. But maybe that's too nice. I'd also set up a guest network with a really obvious name like "I SEE YOU CARL" just to mess with them. At least you didn't have some rando messing with your router settings and redirecting you to fake banking sites. That would be a whole different level of panic.