Because by nature humans are kind and always urge
people to continue to do good and stand by others in times of need and need,
you may be surprised one day by someone who knocks on your door and says:
“Hello, I am your neighbor who lives on the top floor, and I noticed that your
network signal is strong. on my phone, I wonder if you can let me know your
password and share it on the network?”
Of course, out of good faith, you agreed and allowed
him to know your password, a beautiful favor, and a noble human act, but it is
fraught with risks that could pose a real threat to your privacy and personal
life.
Let's think about all the possible scenarios, it could
go even further, for example asking you to share the internet fee and to
connect an ethernet cable to your router, to be a collective internet point for
all his family and your family. Another simple possibility is to have a strong
internet and a fast connection and your friends and relatives come to you now
and then, and of course, you will let them see the password to use your network
on their phones or laptops.
But why not look at it from a different perspective,
perhaps you are the one who needs to communicate with your neighbor to ask him
if you have the opportunity to participate in his network, that is, he is the
host and you are the customer or the user. In the end, whether you're living in
the first or the second situation, it's almost time to know exactly what the
risks are, and how you can protect your data and your family's privacy before
it's too late.
How can you or your neighbor share together in the same network?
We will imagine any of the two cases, for example with
you being the customer and your neighbor being the host, the next question on
your tongue is “Can you connect the ethernet cable to his router “router” and
connect your other end to the WAN port, or will you need a modem router? It is
possible and without the need for a modem router, you may need to make sure
your router's access point is enabled and DHCP and custom firewall are
disabled.
If you are striving to provide a strong connection
point with the host, you will need a high-quality Ethernet cable, especially if
the distance between your home and his home is more than the distance between
an apartment and another apartment on the same floor. You'll need a Cat 6 cable
that's weatherproof, and run the cable between your apartment and condo out of
prying hands that could cut it.
Of course, Cat 6 Ethernet cables are strong, but among
their features, they offer a full speed range of up to a maximum of 328 feet -
up to about 100 meters, if the distance is further than that don't wait for
strong stability in internet speed. But if the aerial connection between you
and your neighbor is strong and does not require the presence of cables, then
you are freed from the burden of searching for cable and bearing its high
costs, although cables are always the best when talking about Internet speed
and stability factors.
How do you risk your privacy and your personal life as a result of this act?
Now as a customer among the users on his network, in
fact, any user on the network with some devious methods can successfully hack
your devices and scan and tamper with your files very easily. On the other
hand, you should be confident in your neighbor that he will not use deception
and phishing methods to spy on your activities, monitor the websites you visit,
or steal the code names and passwords of your personal accounts that you use
with some sites that do not provide strong protection methods. In fact, it can
record and monitor everything you do whether you or your family members are on
its network, but let's assume that's not the problem.
If your neighbor is the host, he has a lot of other
things he can do to annoy you, the most important of which is to limit the
speed of the connected devices that are not his property, you may not notice
this at first or he keeps convincing you that he has nothing to do with the
problem, but of course, he can adjust the range The bandwidth of all your
devices connected to its network, and this will affect the speed of your
Internet connection from your site. The big problem is if there are many
members of your family who use the Internet on a daily basis and each of them
has a set of sensitive and confidential data, there is a lot to do to cause you
many personal problems. Whether you are the host or the customer, rest assured
that your privacy and the security of your data are at risk.
The other common problem is those who use internet
packages. Internet packages are limited in most countries, and gigabytes are
very expensive to the point where they may not allow many callers unless your
package is large and allows communication with a larger number of users.
Instead, you and your neighbor will have to constantly monitor the flow of the
download plan so that neither one of you is surprised when the package runs out
and has to renew additional packages every now and then.
Worse than this if you or the host are not interested
in always checking the periodic updates in order to protect all the systems
connected to the network, then the entire network will be vulnerable to
infection with viruses and malware and it is possible to sabotage all the
devices connected to the same network, and this happens every day when you
visit Friends and relatives use passwords to access the Internet without
realizing that their phones or computers are infected with dangerous viruses
that spread and penetrate into all unprotected devices on the network,
especially when sharing files or disabling the internal firewall of the
devices.
How do you protect yourself if you have to?
We are not saying that you refrain from helping your
neighbor or that he does not agree to help you, but at least you should take
the necessary measures to protect your privacy and your family and look for
ways to secure your confidential information and files in the best possible
way. The positive step that you should take immediately, in this case, is to
rely on virtual private networks known as VPN services, as these services allow
you to protect your privacy by obfuscating all the activities that you do on
the Internet, and also secure your secret identity and work to encrypt it in
the best possible way.
Although the best VPN services are paid services, they
are very cheap when you sign up for annual or semi-annual plans. The other
downside to it is that it sometimes causes a slowdown in the original
connection speed of the default bandwidth of your network, in addition to that,
the service may sometimes experience a connection drop, which is a known
leakage problem, but powerful services provide protection in this case, through
which you can adjust the applications that run Online to stop automatically if
the VPN encounters a connection drop.
Yes, VPN service providers are able to monitor your activity on the Internet and know all your personal secrets and confidential data, but at least these services will not violate your privacy or try to blackmail you or violate the secrets of your family members, and relying on them has now become an important and necessary thing. In the end, it is better to use something even if it is simple than to use nothing at all.