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Continuing with our series on CyberSecurity awareness, Ross Grenier from Webroot is here with a tip to keep you safe from cyber criminals, with this week’s “stay safe” tip.
October is National Cyber security awareness month, and a good time to prepare for ransomware. Ransomware is the most profitable type of malware in history, and allows cyber criminals to encrypt your entire hard drive, then demand a ransom to unlock your data.
Prepare for ransomware by using an antivirus software program. Antivirus software can not only protect your computer, but also block malicious websites, and protect keyboard entry, keeping you and your data safe from cyber criminals.
For more tips on being safe online visit Webroot.com/radio.
Harry asked: “I live in a building. I am on the second floor. We have a Wi-Fi downstairs and I can get it from my apartment, but how can I get this signal on the higher floors? I have a friend up on the eighth floor and he really needs access to the Internet and this would be the best way for him. How do I do that? Do I use a repeater? “
You could use a repeater to try to push the signal up to your friend, but realistically, that probably won’t be enough.
Think of it this way, you live on the second floor, how strong is the signal there? You probably aren’t getting full bars with 2 floors between you and the WiFi source. You’d be repeating that signal to a device 6 floors up from you. It’s not very likely that he’ll get anything at all.
Frankly, as we see it your friend probably has 3 options:
- Talk to whoever manages the WiFi downstairs and see if they’d be willing to set up repeaters on every floor (keep in mind that, if they do this, your speed will likely drop noticeably)
- Tell your friend to pay for his own internet service, or
- Tell your friend to go all the way downstairs every time he wants to use the internet, except for any time he can use his phone, especially if he happens to have hotspot service on his smartphone.
Your building is probably offering WiFi downstairs as a courtesy, and it may only be because they already needed it for other things, such as security cameras. They probably don’t think of it as a replacement for each resident’s own internet service. If that’s the case, unfortunately, that means that your friend is probably out of luck, when it comes to the building helping.
That would leave you as his only potential source of free WiFi.
That would leave you as his only potential source of free WiFi. If you can borrow a router, access point, or repeater, you can set it up just as a way to test whether or not any signal originating from your apartment would reach his without having to spend any money. It doesn’t matter if that signal is not connected to the internet downstairs, don’t worry about, just check to see if just the WiFi radio is strong enough to reach him.
If he can see the signal, go forth with the repeater idea, otherwise, he’s probably out of luck, and frankly that’s the most likely case.