Experts say home networks are particularly vulnerable
When many of the computer industry's top security gurus gathered in San Francisco last month for a conference, a Boston company decided to point its radar toward the airwaves and see how much of the show's wireless activity it could see.
The distressing and ironic answer? The Boston hackers could eavesdrop on more than half of the wireless traffic ... at a security conference!
Security experts offer these tips when using wireless Internet access (abbreviated):
-- Use a suite of security software, including a firewall.
-- When logging on in a cafe or hotel, make sure you find out from an employee what the name of the network is, so you don't fall for a phony network set up by a hacker.
-- Change the password when you set up your router at home.
-- Try using OpenDNS, a free service at www.opendns.com, which will change the router's settings and, among other things, prevent pharming attacks (in which you think you're entering data at, say, your bank's Web site, but really you're at a fake site).
-- When on a secure financial site, make sure the address bar reads https (the "s" at the end stands for "secure") and that a picture of a lock shows up next to the address.
-- To get particularly tricky, when setting up your laptop. Give yourself a gender-bending sign-in.
-- If you get confused, call tech support for the router or the security software. (more)
