So as we’re talking about cybersecurity and last week We talked about how my Netflix got infiltrated. This week I’m relaying the story of my own particularly idiotic behaviour that I thought I should probably talk about this story as well. I have recently learned that October was Cyber Security Awareness month, hence all these posts on cybersecurity (Better a little late than never, right?). I felt like I should share another story of my own IT foibles and screwups. So, I decided to share this other tale of when I made a massively stupid decision and the consequences that it had for me.
The situation before
When I moved into my house, I was fully aware that (being the more tech-savvy person in the house), I was going to be doing most of the tech set up. I also knew that there were going to be quite a few people coming over who would be using our Wifi. I wanted to have a password that I could easily tell people so they could get connected quickly. You can see where I’m going with this. Well, I chose a SERIOUSLY simple password, which was so simple. I’m a little embarrassed to say what it was (no, it was not “password”).
The change that was required
While it was a seriously secure password to remember, the issue we were experiencing was that our internet was PAINFULLY slow. When I mean slow, I mean, I was at some times reminded of dial-up speeds. It would take about 5 to 10 minutes to load a movie, which for living in a city is nuts!
WARNING! WARNING! REALITY CHECK WARNING!
I fully realize that this issue that I’m describing is a first-world issue. I know that there are people in the world with real honest to goodness problems out there. I do not want to demean, dismiss or deny the troubles that people are having. This is, however, a tech blog. I have to talk about this kind of stuff accordingly. Is everyone good? Sweet, back to the post….
I was getting frustrated with how slow the internet was being. I had even changed companies assuming that it was the first company’s service that was the issue. I had reset my router, and I had turned it off and on again. I had gone through every device in my house and “forgot” the Wifi and re-enabled it. It was getting to the point that I thought that I would never be able to figure out what the heck was going on with our internet. I was in the middle of a rant about how our technology was subpar (it wasn’t) and how our internet connection should be able to meet at least the standards of the 19th century. It was then that my wife said to me, “you know, wouldn’t it be wild if the issue was that someone had figured out our password and was just boosting free internet?”
……..*sigh*…………..
So anyway, after a couple of quick tweaks to my system (and the biggest and most justified facepalm I’ve ever experienced), our home internet “miraculously” started working properly.
The result
After doing a massive “Homer Simpson facepalm,” I changed the wifi password to something more complex. Something that was (as I described in my passwords post a few weeks ago) complex with letters, numbers and special characters. I will tell you the difference was immediate. You would have thought someone had taken us directly from a dial-up modem to a supercharged, 4G hyper-sonic modem! It was amazing. The only reason for the swift change is that someone in my area had guessed my old password and was using that instead of paying for it themselves. Most home routers are set up to handle a certain number of devices and use only a certain amount of memory for using the internet. If there are too many devices all using the internet at once, everything slows down. Once I changed my Wifi password, all of the devices in my house sped up while on the internet.
Because of this (And because my wife made me promise to say this if I ever blogged about this little incident), I fully recognize that my wife is brilliant and beautiful.
What I’m hoping from telling you this tale of my own personal idiocy is that when you sign up for things online, setting yourself up with a complex password is a must. Yes, creating an easy password is, well, easier. The problem is that when you set yourself up with an easy password, someone out there could guess it, and use your service. I am so incredibly grateful that the people at my internet provider are smarter than I am. I looked and found that the password to get into my router where you set up your passwords was majorly complex. I could only imagine that if it were left up to me, then I would have (initially) put in something simple. Whoever guessed my Wifi password could have guessed my router’s password, and then I would have REALLY been in trouble.
Do you ever think your Wifi’s too slow?
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