Go ahead….go back and read that again…I’ll wait. That’s right, I said Invisible.
Lets say that you are walking down the street and you see an “Unsavory Character” coming towards you. Chances are, if he doesn’t see you, nothing bad will happen. The same idea applies to computers. Your computer is on the same “Street” ( the Internet ) as the hacker. If he has no idea your computer is there, he wont bother you.
Your computer communicates with the rest of the computers on the internet by sending information through “ports”. There are over 65,000 ports that your computer has access to at any given moment. Some of these ports are dedicated to certain functions…some are just general and used by many different functions. Everyday, computers across the globe send out billions of requests that are called “pings”. Your computer is programmed to answer these pings with a response that basically says “Im Here”. There are a fair number of these pings that are malicious..sent from the computer of a hacker looking for an unsuspecting victim. If the hacker knows your computer is online, you are at risk. The key to being safe, is to make sure that the hacker never knows your computer exists. In other words…invisible.
The way to make that happen is to make sure that your computer is behind a firewall. A firewall is a controller that keeps track of what communications are being sent back and forth over all 65,000 ports. Which is great but the most important thing it does is NOT respond to another computers ping request. Remember…if the bad guy doesn’t know you are there, you are safe.
Ok, so now we all know that you need to be behind a firewall. Whats does that mean exactly? Well the good news is, you might already be behind one. If your home or office network has more than one computer connected to the internet either through a wifi connection or a hardwired connection you are probably using a piece of hardware called a router. Routers usually have hardware firewalls built into them. If your computer is the only computer connected to the internet in your home or office, there is a good chance you are not “invisible”.
Some of the internet providers ( like Uverse) are supplying Modem/Wifi Router combinations which make network set up and maintenance very easy. Alot of the internet providers just give you a modem.
How do you know if you are protected? Click here to navigate to a website that will try and talk to your computer. If you are behind a firewall, it wont really know your computer is there. If you are not behind a firewall, it will tell you the number of the port it found your computer on.
If you find that you are not behind a firewall, don’t panic. There are lots of places that can help you get set up. If you are a do it yourself-er, do some shopping for wifi routers. If you need help, enlist the help of a reputable computer repair shop picking a router out and/or help installing it. In most cases it will take less than an hour and the hardware will cost under $100….money well spent…for becoming invisible.
Home networks are becoming more common. People want to be able to share a single broadband Internet connection to several computers in the house. There are many different devices that you can use to make up your home network. If you have never heard network terminology device names likerouter, hub, etc may seem confusing.