No Free Internet for the Neighbors!

Is your internet running slowly? Do you sometimes notice that it is taking forever to load webpages that normally load quickly? Well, there could be multiple reasons for this, but one of them… could be that your neighbors or other random people in the area are actually using your wireless internet.

I live in the country. When people say they live in the country, you know what I mean. “Country” where it takes five minutes to get to our house from the main road due to the winding mountain road we live on. We have neighbors, but not many. We live on the lake (or river, depending on who you ask).

Our internet isn’t even that fast out here, so who would want to steal our internet is beyond me. I mean, it isn’t like we have 4G options or anything. Though, I do wish we had that option!

I recently read an article about bad neighbors, and being that we have some destroying the woods next to us to build a house, I decided to read it. Though to be quite honest, I don’t call these people “neighbors” instead I opt for “The Invaders.” They are annoying, arrogant, and worst yet – one of them was on a bad reality television show I never watched. More bad qualities can be written about them, but I won’t bother to do so now.

The article said that about 33% of American households don’t actually pay for their internet. They steal it from their neighbors. Yup.

Guess who also gets in trouble if they do illegal activities on their computers? You do! I knew this, but apparently most people find that shocking. If you pay per GB for your internet, it can also cost you a lot of extra money! They can also be severely slowing down the speed of internet at your house.

Unfortunately the article doesn’t say how to get rid of annoying neighbors with any VooDoo spells or anything, but it did give a good suggestion to password protect your wireless internet connection. I quickly did this and with a little search on the make of our wireless router, I figured out how to do it easily.

After setting up the password protected connection, I have noticed that it is going faster. I’m not 100% sure if anyone was actually using our internet or not (if they were they must have had an awful signal), but it does seem to be helping to speed things up.

Have you ever noticed bad neighbors doing this to your internet?
Have you ever used a neighbor’s internet?
Have any tips to get rid of bad neighbors?
Let me know!