Home Lifestyle PropertyHome ImprovementsYour phone’s Wi-Fi gives away your address

Your phone’s Wi-Fi gives away your address

by LLP Editor
11th Jun 21 1:49 pm

As of January 2021, there were 4.66 billion internet users worldwide, 92.6% of them connecting to the internet through the Wi-Fi on their phones. However, few know that phone Wi-Fi can reveal a personโ€™s living location.

โ€œAll it takes for someone to find your house location is your Wi-Fi name. There are public websites like Wigle.net that create heatmaps of Wi-Fi hotspots. Anybody can simply type your Wi-Fi name into Wigleโ€™s search bar and find out where you live. Once the hackers know your address, it makes it easier for them to connect to your router and steal your data,โ€ digital security expert at NordVPN Daniel Markuson comments.

How does your phone reveal your Wi-Fi name?

A phone is continuously looking for trusted Wi-Fi networks. Once a person gets close to home or work, the device automatically connects to the network it finds there. This is convenient, but by continually broadcasting these โ€œjoining requestsโ€, the phone gives out a lot of valuable information about it.

โ€œThere are apps that can collect the names of all the nearby Wi-Fis, including your home network. This data is then sent to websites like Wigle.net that attach a Wi-Fi name to its location,โ€ Daniel Markuson explains. โ€œIn fact, you donโ€™t even need to have the app installed on your device โ€“ itโ€™s enough for your neighbor to have it and catch the signal of your home Wi-Fi.โ€

Can hackers know where you live?

Having โ€œjoining requestsโ€ combined with Wigleโ€™s data, a hacker only needs a Wi-Fi name to figure out the userโ€™s living location. There are a couple of ways they find it out.

A malicious person might call pretending to be the Internet Service Provider and ask for the Wi-Fi name, or send a phishing email asking to confirm the connection details. Another way is to use Wi-Fi scanners to catch the joining requests that devices are sending.

โ€œA hacker can stick the scanner under a bench in your local park, under a table at your favorite coffee shop, or just carry it in his backpack,โ€ says Daniel Markuson from NordVPN. โ€œYou wonโ€™t notice it, but the scanner will passively log all nearby Wi-Fi join requests.โ€

The hacker will then use software to see the requests his device caught. This way, he will see all local Wi-Fi networks, what devices are connected to them, and which devices are โ€œsearchingโ€ for trusted networks.

โ€œWith such information at hand, it makes it a lot easier to connect to your Wi-Fi router. Securing your router is vital. As a central connection point for every device in your home, your router controls who has access to your home Wi-Fi. If anyone malicious is connected to it, they could hack your phone, steal your files, spy on everything you do online, and even steal your identity,โ€ Daniel Markuson warns.

How can you protect yourself?

As scary as it sounds, Daniel Markuson says that there are ways to protect yourself, and most of them donโ€™t require much technical knowledge.

Change your phoneโ€™s Wi-Fi settings or turn it off. Even if your phone is connected to a Wi-Fi network, this doesnโ€™t stop it from scanning the area for other networks. The easiest way to change this is to either adjust your settings or completely turn Wi-Fi scanning off. You will still be able to manually connect to your saved Wi-Fi network (you wonโ€™t need to re-enter the password.)
Change your Wi-Fi strength. To keep your Wi-Fi from showing up on hotspot heat maps, you can reduce your Wi-Fi strength. You will get a better signal if your router is in an open space rather than in your closet, but it doesnโ€™t need to be so strong that your neighbors can use it too.
Use a VPN on your Wi-Fi router. A VPN can encrypt the traffic on every device connected to your home Wi-Fi. It scrambles all of your online data, so your traffic appears as complete gibberish to any hackers trying to intercept it. That way, criminals wonโ€™t be able to access your data even if they hack the router.

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