wifi help please

[chilly]

When i connect to my wifi at home with my iphone it says in the wifi networks "colins wifi" it has since we set it up. for the last two days it has changed to HT-APO it all seems to work fine but i am wondering if it has been hacked or tampered with in some way. There are 4 young polish lads living next door who never leave the house except for a bit of shopping,they stay in all day on laptops and desktops doing god knows what. I know this cos my neighbour on the other side has been round to complain several times and they are all just sitting there on their pooters. (he has a young kid and they play noisy music) am i being paranoid? should i go round and terminate them? or should i just ring virgin and ask them to look into it? if i find out they have hacked into my pooter/wifi it will make the papers cos i will club them like seals. not kidding!

[rustyrider]

Log into your wireless access point and see what the SSID is set at.  It sounds like somebody has got into it and changed it.  No idea about a Virgin box, on a BT one you connect to bthomehub, on others you connect using the IP address (something like 192.168.2.1) from your browser.  If you have left the setup password at the default it is fairly easy for someone to log in (assuming either no security or WEP which is alledgedly simple to get round).  The fact that your can still connect with your iPhone suggests that any security passcode hasn't been changed.

Alternatively, you may not be connecting to your own network at all, you may be connecting to theirs.

[chilly]

its still my wifi cos i connected with the iphone then switched the wifi off and it disappeared then re appeared when i switched it on again. i checked the ip address and its still the same. i am a numpty with this kind of thing so really have no idea what to look for

[Captain Haddock]

Did you have it secured in the first place? Lots of people get home from the shop and plug a router in, it works so they leave it alone, this means the admin username and password are factory standard(and easy to find from a manual) and no encryption or security, anyone can make changes to it.

[chilly]

i set it up with the virgin help line and set my own username and password. that was ages ago i wouldn't have a clue how to get back into it. i only know the name has changed from colins wifi. i looked in the network settings and it said file sharing was switched off and the only things allowed are my daughters laptop and the printer. i might ave a word with virgin

[rustyrider]

Get onto the virgin helpline again, they will at least be able to talk you through checking it and changing it back to how it was.  They'll be able to tell you how to check the security settings too.

[Slaninar]

There are 4 young polish lads living next door who never leave the house except for a bit of shopping,they stay in all day on laptops and desktops doing god knows what.

More knowledge, less prejudice. Find a mate who knows that stuff and ask him/her to set you a nice secure home WiFi. Perhaps even with MAC address filter if you don't use a lot of different wireless units on your home network.

Or meet the Poles!

[martynR]

i set it up with the virgin help line and set my own username and password. that was ages ago i wouldn't have a clue how to get back into it. i only know the name has changed from colins wifi. i looked in the network settings and it said file sharing was switched off and the only things allowed are my daughters laptop and the printer. i might ave a word with virgin

Hi, the virgin router ip address that you need to connect to is  192.168.0.1  and it might ask for login name/password . It might be that you are connecting to other network, like theirs if the phone has been reset recently, you can have a search on your phone for wifi networks. The virgin media hub/superhub is really crap, but not with the security. You can reset the hub/rooter, look for a small hole on the rooter which says RESET, you need a thin pin for that. The reset would set all to default settings, the password and network name is usually on the hub.


BTW I have virgin VMDG280 hub/rooter and never had a problem(touch wood) apart from download speed.


And to crack a hub password is not that easy, I would not change password or network name from a default, even the the default password is rather good as it has some random letters and not the standard word at least on mine.

[Sunny Intervals]

Have you had a power outage of has it been switched off for any period ?

Some WI FI hubs go to default settings if they're off for more than a given time.


On Virgin here, but have our own Wi fi hub, had to have 2 modems changed in the space of a few months this summer, don't rate Virgin at all

[chilly]

i dont think it has been switched off for any length of time (not by me anyway) will ask swmbo when she gets up. everything works fine and its still quick,would a power problem reset the name i gave it but still let us use the wifi?

[rustyrider]

Only if it has no security set, in which case anyone else can connect to it too.

[chilly]

sorted i think   i typed HT_APO into my pooter and it came up with the virgin wifi help page. apparently its a common problem with the DIR-615. i just printed off some instructions and changed it back,easy peasy. still got my eye on them poles though

[pinkbikerfzs1]

On mine, you can specify the MAC addresses the rooter will accept, and no others, plus the password key.