Having an intruder on your Wi-Fi is not pleasant at all. It is not the first time that I have told you this anecdote, but many years ago I had to go through this problem myself, and it took me a long time to realize because, in the end, I never came to think that in my community of neighbors someone could be stealing my Wi-Fi.
However, the truth is that the symptoms were very clear. Everything pointed in that direction, but that incredulity due to the particularities of the community of neighbors in which I lived, made me never consider that possibility until, finally, one day it occurred to me to thoroughly review the configuration of the router and I found, in the list of connected devices, an unwelcome guest.
This intruder had used his name, so it was very easy for me to identify the neighbor responsible for the intrusion . It didn’t take more than a couple of minutes to kick him out and completely block his access, but the truth is that I was suffering, because of him, Internet connection problems for several days, and in the end I had moments of quite intense frustration .
I don’t want the same thing to happen to you, so I’m going to break down three clear symptoms that you have an intruder stealing your Wi-Fi, and I’m going to explain how you can kick him out at once , and prevent to sneak back into your network. It’s very easy, so don’t worry, you can put it into practice even if you don’t have advanced knowledge.
Symptoms that you have an intruder on your Wi-Fi
- Your Internet connection works fine at times, but on certain occasions you notice significant performance losses , even if they are not too serious. The intruder may not want to arouse suspicion, and may be controlling himself by using your connection.
- The opposite can also happen and it doesn’t cut a hair when it comes to draining all your bandwidth, and it does it all day. If so, you will notice your Internet connection is always going bad, whatever you do. Do not think that it is the fault of your provider, check first if you have an intruder.
- Your connection is not slow at all, the connection speed is even good, but you have a very high latency that prevents you from playing online titles. This was the clearest and most frequent symptom that I suffered when I had that intrusion.
To indisputably confirm that you have an intruder on your Wi-Fi, and take the necessary steps to kick him out, just follow these steps:
- Open the Internet browser and copy this, without quotes, in the address bar: “http://192.168.0.1/”.
- The access page to your router will appear. You have to enter your data , username and password, to continue.
- Once you get to the main menu, go to the «device information» section, where a list will appear with the devices and equipment that have recently been connected to your router. If you see something that doesn’t add up, you know, you have an intruder.
- To kick him out, you just have to change the password of your Wi-Fi. I recommend that you disable public sampling of your network name while you’re at it. If you don’t know how to do it, calm down, it is an option that is available in the “WLAN” section.