Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff from house stuff works dot com where
Speaker 1: smart happens. Hi. I'm Marshall Brain with today's question. Can
Speaker 1: you be arrested for downloading child porn even if you
Speaker 1: never do? And the fact is that you can. There
Speaker 1: have been several recent arrests that should send shivers down
Speaker 1: the spine of anyone who has installed a wireless router,
Speaker 1: also known as a WiFi router. These little boxes allow
Speaker 1: your laptop, your iPad, and other wireless devices to connect
Speaker 1: to the internet. Tens of millions of people in the
Speaker 1: United States have installed wireless routers because they make it
Speaker 1: so easy to connect to the Internet. It turns out
Speaker 1: that if you install a wireless router, and if you
Speaker 1: leave it in its default settings and you turn it on,
Speaker 1: you've opened yourself up to a major vulnerability. Your new
Speaker 1: wireless router creates a wide open WiFi hot spot with
Speaker 1: a diameter of several hundred feet. Because you have used
Speaker 1: the default settings, which means that you have set no
Speaker 1: password to prevent people from connecting, anyone nearby can now
Speaker 1: connect into your hot spot. It could be a neighbor,
Speaker 1: the guest of a neighbor, or someone parked on a
Speaker 1: nearby street. Because you have no password on your router,
Speaker 1: anyone nearby can connect to your router in just a
Speaker 1: few seconds. When they connect, you will not know that
Speaker 1: it's happening unless you were to get in and look
Speaker 1: at the routers log files and its tools and so on.
Speaker 1: And you may not ever care. If they read a
Speaker 1: few web pages or check their email with your connection,
Speaker 1: that tiny bit of bandwidth they use would be imperceptible.
Speaker 1: But if they start watching a streaming video off of
Speaker 1: YouTube or Netflix, you may notice that your connection has
Speaker 1: gotten really sluggish, and you may have no idea why.
Speaker 1: The bigger problem, however, is child porn. If the person
Speaker 1: connected to your hot spot downloads child pern bography, or
Speaker 1: any other illegal material, federal agents are going to trace
Speaker 1: the illegal activity to your wireless router, and then they're
Speaker 1: gonna come after you. Once they find you, the attitude
Speaker 1: will be to arrest now and ask questions later. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the person who did the downloading is invisible. It may
Speaker 1: take days or weeks for your innocence to be confirmed.
Speaker 1: And the amazing thing is that you will have no
Speaker 1: idea that it's happening at the time it's happening. So
Speaker 1: what can you do to prevent this scenario from unfolding.
Speaker 1: There are actually three different things you can do, all
Speaker 1: of which require a little bit of fiddling with your router.
Speaker 1: If you are not technology minded, this fiddling may be
Speaker 1: uncomfortable and you may want to enlist the help of
Speaker 1: a friend who is technology minded or hire someone to
Speaker 1: configure things. The basic idea is that your WiFi router
Speaker 1: has a way to manipulate its settings. You need to
Speaker 1: log into the router and at the very least set
Speaker 1: up a WiFi password. How do you log into the router?
Speaker 1: The owner's manual for the router will contain instructions on
Speaker 1: how to do this. If you can't find the manual
Speaker 1: that came with your router, you can find it on
Speaker 1: the internet by typing the model number into a search engine.
Speaker 1: Some routers even come with a CD that will help
Speaker 1: you through these steps. So what you do is you
Speaker 1: log into your router, find the wireless settings page, and
Speaker 1: create something called a w P A password for your router,
Speaker 1: not a web password. A w P A password is
Speaker 1: the kind of password you would like to create. This
Speaker 1: is one of those things that takes thirty seconds. If
Speaker 1: you know what you're doing. As soon as you set
Speaker 1: that password, you've eliminated the threat of accidental arrests for
Speaker 1: child porn. Of course, you've also just disconnected all your
Speaker 1: own devices as well. They can't connect in now that
Speaker 1: you've set a password, So now you need to go
Speaker 1: to your laptop, your iPad, and all your other devices
Speaker 1: and type in the password there as well. They will
Speaker 1: then be able to reconnect to your password protected wireless
Speaker 1: rout uter, and chances are you will never have to
Speaker 1: think about it again. If you want to be even
Speaker 1: more secure, there are two other things you can do.
Speaker 1: The first thing is to turn off something called S
Speaker 1: s i D broadcasting. This is a feature that makes
Speaker 1: your network visible to anyone who's nearby. Once you turn
Speaker 1: off S s i D broadcasting, you can connect because
Speaker 1: you know the S s i D that's one of
Speaker 1: the things you set in your router settings, but other
Speaker 1: people will not see your network. The other thing you
Speaker 1: can do is turn on Mac address screening. You can
Speaker 1: enter the MAC address of each device you want to
Speaker 1: connect into your network. Anyone with an unknown Mac address
Speaker 1: will be denied access, even if they guess the password
Speaker 1: while you're in there. Making these changes. Make sure your
Speaker 1: router does not create and enable a separate guest network.
Speaker 1: Some routers do this as a courtesy or as an
Speaker 1: extra feature. If your router does create a second guest network,
Speaker 1: disable it or set a password on this second high
Speaker 1: spot as well. By enabling all three of these features
Speaker 1: and making sure you don't have a guest network, you
Speaker 1: make it virtually impossible for anyone outside of your household
Speaker 1: to connect to your network. And now you've made it
Speaker 1: impossible for strangers to download child porn through your network
Speaker 1: and for someone from the federal government to break down
Speaker 1: your door early in the morning. For more illness and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: and don't forget to check out the brain stuff blog
Speaker 1: on the house stuff works dot com home page. You
Speaker 1: can also follow brain stuff on Facebook or Twitter at
Speaker 1: brain stuff HSW. The house Stuff Works I Find app
Speaker 1: has arrived. Download it today on iTunes.