Someone is mooching your WiFi Internet connection? If the answer is "yes", then you need to read our anti-moocher guide to prevent smart-ass neighbors from stealing your bandwidth.
I suspect someone is stealing my bandwidth by tapping into my wireless router without my consent. Is there any trick to stop neighbors from using my wireless Internet router?
If you discovered or suspect that other people are using your wireless Internet connection without your consent and that someone is stealing your Internet connection bandwidth by tapping into your wireless router you can still protect yourself from mooching.
The first thing you can do is to define the list of trusted MAC addresses that can connect to your wireless router. Every network card has a unique MAC address, that identifies the computer connecting to the router.
Your router's security options let you define the list of trusted MAC addresses that can connect to the router. Any other network cards will be blocked. Please refer to your wireless router's manual to learn how to configure the list of secure MACs.
In order to check the MAC address of a network adapter, you'll need to run the following command on each computer you wish to whitelist (under Windows click Start > Run > type cmd and press Enter to open command prompt):
ipconfig /all
This will display some details about your network cards. The MAC address is the Physical Address. Locate the line and write down the address that looks similar to this:
08-74-28-F4-00-F4
The next step to stop moochers from stealing your bandwidth is to configure a WEP, WPA2 or WPA2-Mixed key that will be used to authenticate the computer connecting to your wireless network. Once you set the key using any of the above listed encryption methods (WPA2-Mixed is the best and strongest), you'll need to enter it on the client computer when you connect to the router wirelessly. Refer to your router's user manual to learn how to configure WEP / WPA2 keys.
To sum it up, defining a list of trusted MAC addresses and establishing a strong WPA2 password, will effectively ban any users except those you want from accessing your wireless network.
change your password :P