Who is stealing your WiFi? Have you ever experienced slow WiFi connection and automatically assumed and cursed the ISP for it? Sometimes it may not be your ISP’s fault. Someone could be hogging up all our precious bandwidth without your consent. In this article, we’ll show you how you can keep an eye on all the devices that is currently connected and sharing your WiFi connection and kick off any unauthorized devices or in simpler terms – how to see who is stealing your WiFi?
How to see who is stealing your WiFi
- First and foremost you need to install an app called Fing, you can find it on the Play Store.
- Once you’ve done installing it you need to connect to the network you want to monitor.
- Once that’s taken care of, open the app and you will see the name of the network you are connected to along with the Refresh and Settings buttons.
- If you cannot see any devices then just tap on Refresh and you will be presented will the list of all devices that are currently connected to the WiFi network.
- The app will also let you know if it is a smartphone or a PC.
- If you see a suspicious device or a device which is hogging up all the bandwidth, tap it and you’ll be presented will the list of different options for interacting with that device.
- These options will let you ping the device, enabling Wake on LAN signals and even log the device’s connecting and disconnecting time.
- This app will also let you know the assigned IP address, MAC address, vendor, etc.
If you find any suspicious device, you can prevent it from being ever connected to the network. Fing allows you to see the MAC address of every devices currently connected to the network. Make note of the MAC address which appears in XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX format. Now, once that is done you need to access the router’s settings via a computer that is connected to the router (or smartphone if remote access is enabled) and block that MAC you have previously noted down. This option is usually under Security tab but it varies from router to router so you need to locate it on your own. Enter the MAC and enable MAC address filtering or whatever alternative the router provides.
To eliminate stealing your Wifi and the possibility of intruders hogging up your bandwidth in the future, I suggest you to change the WiFi password to something stronger with numeric and special characters. Never use any dictionary word in your password as it can be dictionary attack. Happy Web surfing.
Dictionary Attack:
A dictionary attack is a method of breaking into a password-protected computer or server by systematically entering every word in a dictionary as a password.
Also Read:
- How to Fix Failed to Obtaining IP Address Error in Android
- How to set-up and use WiFi on Android Wear?
- How to transfer files between a PC and Android device using WiFi?
- How to share mobile internet using Android WiFi HotSpot feature
