Risk of having connected to an unsecure wireless network?
Discussion
I've just realised that for the last 3 hours I have been connected to something other than our home wireless connection. It was an unsecured wireless network called TP-Link.
I'm not sure how it happened, I should have auto connected to the home wireless as usual and the home wireless has 5 bars of signal whereas the other had only 2. I have now disconnected to it and set it to manual connect.
I have no idea whether this is a rogue network or just someone nearby who has an open network (I can also see an unsecured Belkin as well).
How problematic might this be for me? I'm running XP pro with McAfee running, I've checked that McAfee is still activated and it hasn't flagged any warnings.
I usually run Malwaresbytes if I am concerned about nasties, I'll download the latest version and run that later. Is there anything else I ought to consider?
I'm not sure how it happened, I should have auto connected to the home wireless as usual and the home wireless has 5 bars of signal whereas the other had only 2. I have now disconnected to it and set it to manual connect.
I have no idea whether this is a rogue network or just someone nearby who has an open network (I can also see an unsecured Belkin as well).
How problematic might this be for me? I'm running XP pro with McAfee running, I've checked that McAfee is still activated and it hasn't flagged any warnings.
I usually run Malwaresbytes if I am concerned about nasties, I'll download the latest version and run that later. Is there anything else I ought to consider?
Piglet said:
s3fella said:
go and spend all you can on coke and hookers, before the LAtvians do.
I've done that already...now what do I do 
99% of unsecured networks are networks people have misconfigured. There are 3 alone in my radius and I come across them all of the time with work.
In the real world, for short-term use, unsecured networks pose very little risk to be honest. Whilst its not advisable I would say someone has got their new router today and just pressed the on button. For one reason or another when your computer searched the availible networks your home one did not show straight away so it just connected to the nearest one that did not need a password.
You would be VERY unlucky if someone had set-up a fake wireless network in your area, given their small range its not the kind of thing thats done too often as its not worth it, its done mostly in places like service stations where the potential users are a lot higher.
Nothing could have gotten "on to" your computer, whilst Mcafee has its own set of problems, it does have a firewall and it will have stopped people accessing your computer or just loading you up with viruses/malware.
And as you say, you entered no passwords so no need to worry about the passwords being snatched through the air, at the most they could have seen the webpages you were looking at, but as I said, extremely unlikely.
You would be VERY unlucky if someone had set-up a fake wireless network in your area, given their small range its not the kind of thing thats done too often as its not worth it, its done mostly in places like service stations where the potential users are a lot higher.
Nothing could have gotten "on to" your computer, whilst Mcafee has its own set of problems, it does have a firewall and it will have stopped people accessing your computer or just loading you up with viruses/malware.
And as you say, you entered no passwords so no need to worry about the passwords being snatched through the air, at the most they could have seen the webpages you were looking at, but as I said, extremely unlikely.
ymwoods said:
Nothing could have gotten "on to" your computer, whilst Mcafee has its own set of problems, it does have a firewall and it will have stopped people accessing your computer or just loading you up with viruses/malware.
It depends on how the firewall is set up. I have not used McAfee for a while, but as an example , with trend you can have profiles for your firewall for Home,Office, and public Wireless and assign a profile to each wired/wireless connection.If McAfee is dumb ( and it was 5 years ago) if you have setup your Pc to share documents etc and allowed the firewall to do this, then connecting to an unknown network will more than likely allow all that are on that unknown network to acess your shared documents/photos etc
lestag said:
ymwoods said:
Nothing could have gotten "on to" your computer, whilst Mcafee has its own set of problems, it does have a firewall and it will have stopped people accessing your computer or just loading you up with viruses/malware.
It depends on how the firewall is set up. I have not used McAfee for a while, but as an example , with trend you can have profiles for your firewall for Home,Office, and public Wireless and assign a profile to each wired/wireless connection.If McAfee is dumb ( and it was 5 years ago) if you have setup your Pc to share documents etc and allowed the firewall to do this, then connecting to an unknown network will more than likely allow all that are on that unknown network to acess your shared documents/photos etc
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