Why to Be Safe with WiFi

If your mother uses wifi at home to send you e-mail, and your home network is not protected by WEP or WPA, what reasons would you suggest to her for enabling one of these two protocols at home if the liability of reading those e-mails still exists once her message leaves your home, on it’s way to school?


When a message is sent using a wireless network, the message is transmitted from a computer to a wireless router through radio signals. Similar to how radio waves from one set of walkie talkies can be intercepted by another, signals from a computer to a router can also be intercepted. Now I haven't actually tried it, but it is apparently quite easy to intercept wireless signals, especially if the "interceptor" is within the range of the wireless network. For this reason, protection by WEP or, even better, by WPA (since WEP can be more easily decoded) is a really good idea for wireless users. These protections encrypt information and messages sent so that it is hard to decode if intercepted when it is sent from the computer to the wireless network. Why is this important? Since the information can be intercepted so easily, without encryption it's a free for all. The information can be used against you, used to find identifiable information on you, and even used to steal your identity. My mom is not always careful about what she sends me in emails (sometimes its a phone number, refill prescription number, or even a password to an online account). She sees that it goes from her email account to mine and often forgets what happens in between. Sending this kind of information is never smart, but it happens. Using encryption on messages helps keep their content much more secure from onlookers, hackers, and even the government, making it much harder to decipher them.


These protections, however, only protect the information from the computer to the router. There is still liability and risk when it enters the internet and travels to me at school. This information can still be seen, but since there is so much more information being transmitted on the "wired" internet it is more difficult for her message to be seen mainly because it is more difficult for one tiny email to be noticed. This does not mean she is not vulnerable at this point, she is just much less vulnerable then when her information had not yet entered the "wired" internet and her information could be seen by just about anyone outside her house. Although Abelson states in chapter five that "risks of weak systems are often rationalized in attempts to avoid the trouble of switching to more secure alternatives", I think the trouble of switching to any protection or the most secure protection is worth the advancement in security that we will receive.