Linus' House of IT: 15 cents please

[Andrea]

Originally Posted by Linus

Now, on why it changed. I have a question: does the router have wifi on it? And if it does, do you have a password on the wifi and have you changed the default administrator password? Most of the time these routers come with a default admin password and it's very possible that someone could have gotten into the router and changed those settings to use your router to surf.

It is EXTREMELY important to change the password on the router to something that is difficult and not related to anything you like (e.g., movies, tv shows, celebrities) or covet (e.g., kids, spouse, friends, family, furrkids). The password should NOT be less than 12 characters, have both lower and upper case, numbers and special characters (e.g., !@#$%^&*....)

Yes, it is on WiFi and yes, there is a password assigned by the internet provider. It is at least 15 characters long and has never been changed. Heck, I don't even know how to change it. I don't believe it has upper and lower case, or special characters.

If someone had changed the router password, how would I have been able to access the internet on my laptop and tablet? How would changing to No Proxy have allowed me internet access?

Thank you for the Proxy explanation. I don't think I need to be able to use a proxy but with NSA and such.....