I used to think a simple password was fine for my home router until my neighbor's kid, who's into tech, showed me how he could see my network name and guess the password in under 10 minutes using a free tool he found online.

I switched to a 16-character random password with letters, numbers, and symbols, and now I'm wondering if I should also hide my SSID or if that's more trouble than it's worth for actual security.

3 comments

3 Comments

the_miles5d ago

So your neighbor's kid was just casually wardriving your network for fun? Hiding the SSID is like putting a blanket over a parked car and thinking it's gone, it just makes your own life harder when connecting new devices. That long random password is doing 99% of the work, and the other 1% isn't worth the headache of manually typing in a hidden network name every single time.

pat_fisher245d ago

My buddy hid his SSID thinking he was a security genius. His smart TV updates kept failing because it couldn't find the network. He spent an hour on the phone with support before they figured it out. He turned the broadcast back on and just uses a strong passphrase now. The hidden name caused more problems than it solved.

amy9745d ago

Been there, done that. I hid my SSID once and my own laptop would drop the connection every other day. My phone would just give up trying to reconnect. It felt like I was locking myself out of my own house. Went back to broadcasting with a long password and everything just works.