Don’t Let Your Kids Infect Your Wi-Fi with the Latest Virus

The situation has happened: your child is excited about the hottest new game going around school, and he downloads it onto his personal laptop. The game, of course, has a virus. Your teen’s laptop is connected to your home Wi-Fi network, so now, like the chicken pox, your whole family’s devices are infected. While viruses can and do transfer through Wi-Fi networks, you can prevent them from spreading by trying one of these simple tricks.

Turn on your Wi-Fi router’s encryption.

When you first get a router, its encryption feature will likely be disabled. But once it’s installed or turned on, you want to encrypt your router so only certain individuals can use it by connecting the router to an encryption setting called “WPA2.” To encrypt your router, you need to pick a password. You don’t want a password you can easily remember — instead, the best passwords combine letters, symbols, and numbers.

Change your default passwords.

Most routers come with passwords preset, and some hackers can be familiar with the default passwords used on common routers. Again, once your device is installed, you should change the default password and use a longer, more complicated password.

Change the default name of your Wi-Fi network.

Your router comes with a default router name: a service set identifier, or a “SSID.” A computer searching for wireless networks available will be able to see all the wireless networks with public broadcasting of this SSID. You want this SSID to be private to you and your family, so you should change your SSID network name to something original. To increase your security, don’t label your SSID with any identifying information.

Turn off your router’s name broadcasting.

After you’ve changed the SSID name, you also want to stop it from broadcasting publicly. To do this, you should turn on your network’s privacy settings. This will require you to set a password, but it will also prevent anyone from getting on your Wi-Fi without knowing this password.

Even if your child does bring a virus home, all hope is not lost. Simply download PSafe Total for Windows. PSafe’s antivirus software protects your computer from computer viruses and malware by scanning for intruders in real time. With 24-hour protection from PSafe, your home network will never be invaded by the hottest new (virus) trend again.