How To Tell If Someone Is Piggy-backing My WIFI

We have cable broadband and Win 7. Lately I've noticed longer waits when I, for example, try to delete several emails in Yahoo. I'm also getting more "time-out" notices, though usually clicking "try again" works fine.

This has been going on for a few weeks and I was wondering if my WIFI is being poached by someone. Our next door neighbor is doing so for her tablet, but I set it up that way for her and had to use a password. Except for that one person, we're not sharing our signal with anyone else.

I'm just more curious than anything, but if I do find a poacher, I'll want to cut them off, too.

Thanks in advance for any help or advice.

As long as you are using WPA2 with a secure password (longer than 12 characters), I really doubt someone is using your connection.

I'd start by disabling wireless to see if that fixes the issue. If that didn't fix the problem, it is a hard wired system or your connection. If that does fix the problem, change the password (ensuring you have WPA2 enabled), and add devices one at a time until you find the problem system or you have none left to add.

Does your router give you traffic graphs? That would be a surefire way to know what the culprit is.

rpjkw11 said:

We have cable broadband and Win 7. Lately I've noticed longer waits when I, for example, try to delete several emails in Yahoo. I'm also getting more "time-out" notices, though usually clicking "try again" works fine.

This has been going on for a few weeks and I was wondering if my WIFI is being poached by someone. Our next door neighbor is doing so for her tablet, but I set it up that way for her and had to use a password. Except for that one person, we're not sharing our signal with anyone else.

I'm just more curious than anything, but if I do find a poacher, I'll want to cut them off, too.

Thanks in advance for any help or advice.

Click to expand...

The time outs may be a damaged line. And Yahoo likes to do that sometimes, IIRC.

Lately, Yahoo is like, "Let me annoy you today!".

Were your downloads slow lately?

Thideras, I'll check into a traffic graph as that would show what I want as well as possible other problems. I know cable broadband can, or used to, slow down as more users come online, but at 5AM I doubt I have any competition. The password has 15 digits and letters so it should be "fairly" secure (assuming anything is secure nowdays).

RJARRRPCGP, downloads were slow this morning, but are OK now. Mornings seem the slowest.

You could easily rougly diagnose the issue by first checking with speedtest.net. Than going to your router and seeing all the devices in your listings. If you see one that doesn't belong there, well you found the little weasel otherwise you might have something wrong with the hardware or outside.

Its funny, I had the same thing happen to me. They wanted me to do surgery to my setup. Basically I didn't listen to them because I knew, my computer instincts in me and home networking experience told me the issue was outdoors. They sent a tech to the house 3 times to check and test the internal house lines. Nothing showed up. All connections are up to spec. After the 3rd tech, they sent a 4th guy finally to check the pole outside which I've been screaming for them to do from the get-go. The culprit was the squirrels had chewed the wires for the insulation apparently. Low and behold, IF they would have listened to me I wouldn't have gone through this ordeal for 6 months. Loss of TV, Phones and lots of internet downtime randomly but would act like an angel when the techs were around.

Sorry for the whole story but its possible this might be the case as well.

Could always login to your router and look at the connected clients, or lock yours down to only your devices mac addresses.

rpjkw11 said:

Thideras, I'll check into a traffic graph as that would show what I want as well as possible other problems. I know cable broadband can, or used to, slow down as more users come online, but at 5AM I doubt I have any competition. The password has 15 digits and letters so it should be "fairly" secure (assuming anything is secure nowdays).

RJARRRPCGP, downloads were slow this morning, but are OK now. Mornings seem the slowest.

Click to expand...

Cable internet is RF Based, which is moderated by an electrical current. As long as your system has amplifiers and line extenders installed properly, it doesn't matter if you're the only customer, or there is 800 customers online at the same time. If you're the first in line, you don't get more amperage than anyone else.

If you have low amperage, everyone else around you does too, at least until the next active device in the cable system.

I'm not sure how they work, but DSL systems like ATT, are limited systems such as you describe. You can have two neighbors, and one of them can literally be 10 feet too far in the system to actually have reliable service.


That being said, are your problems only with Yahoo? Or is this universal? If you try the speedtests that were recommended above, and your speed is lower than you're paid for, you may have some cable problems. I'm a former Comcast Tech (And, I was pretty awesome at my job, my customers actually liked me ) Could be a bad splitter, bad modem, bad router. A small cut in a line, bad drop from the pole to your house, or any other issue from a list of about 20 possibilities.

Some providers throttle during peak times(normally 5pm-1am) or have soft caps, but you said it was in the morning so I doubt it was that.

Storms can course slow downs with cable

You can check the DCHP lease table and identify anyone on your network that way.

Using WPA2 encryption with a non dictionary complex (16 or more chars) password is a good start but meaningless if your router has WPS enabled. Using a free product called Reaver and about 10 minutes on youtube anyone can start a bruteforce attack against your router and break in. Granted this process is cumbersome 4-12 hours on average but once they are in you are boned. It doesn't matter if you change your PW they can instantly use the WPS PIN to get your new PW. Not all routers are vulnerable to Reaver but google will quickly tell you if yours is.

To protect your wifi perform the following:
1. Disable SSID broadcast (doesnt stop real attackers but keeps the kiddos away)
2. Require MAC address filtering (again not going to stop real attackers)
3. Use WPA2 encryption with a password comprised of at least 16 random digits letters and special characters (yes I know this is a pain in the butt...welcome to 2014).
3. Turn OFF WPS if your router supports this, if you can't turn it off and your router is on the list of exploitable routers I highly recommend running something like DD-WRT on your router instead of the factory operating system. That will allow you to turn OFF WPS.

WPS is the biggest threat as it puts your entire system open to attack even if you follow all the other steps.
Make sure you have the latest firmware on your router too. They are catching on and building in countermeasures to stop reaver attacks in the newer firmwares. I've read that there is a new attack on WPS that can instantly break WPS using a flaw in the RNG algorithm. Not sure its been implemented out in the wild but its coming I'm sure.