On Mar 22, 2005, at 9:56 PM, Debra Platt wrote:
I have a question about wireless security. I have a wireless router with cable modem. My next door neighbor has gotten emails with attachments from one of our accounts.
Do you know how specifically your neighbor is getting access to your email messages? I can think of four possibilities:
A. Your correspondents are sending email to your neighbor instead of to you. Seems strange, but if you have similar names it might be the case. You can rule this out, however, if you are receiving the emails on your account. If it is the case, tell your correspondents to use your correct email address.
B. Your email is being mis-delivered to his/her account. This seems unlikely, but if you both have the same service provider, I suppose it's possible. This one needs to be fixed by your service provider.
C. Your neighbor is accessing your ISP's email server and downloading your mail. Hard to see how this could be accidental, since s/he would have to know your user name and password. I'm not a lawyer, but if this is the case, one option for you is to (threaten to) call the police. If your neighbor somehow guessed (or was told) your password, changing it should fix the problem. Just choose a good password and don't tell him/her. If your neighbor discovered your password by eavesdropping on the wireless connection, see D below.
D. Your neighbor is eavesdropping on your wireless connection. This would take a fairly geeky neighbor, but it is possible. Unfortunately, pretty much all of the 802.11 security modes can be cracked, so if your neighbor is geeky enough and determined enough, changing your wireless settings probably won't stop it. The police option (C) might be effective. Another approach might be to see if your ISP supports SSL access to its mail servers. If so, that should stop any eavesdropping.
Is it possible for someone to copy an address and send emails? How can this be stopped. I changed the password today.
Now I'm not sure if I understand your problem. From this sentence (and below) I'm wondering if the problem is that your neighbor isn't "stealing" your email messages but, rather, is receiving bogus email that appears to be from you (but isn't really). If that's the case, disregard A-D above. But I've got bad news for you. If someone on the Internet wants to pretend to be you (as far as email is concerned) it's extremely trivial and there is nothing you can do to either stop it or identify the offender. (I could send an email to this list that appeared to come from you in about 30 seconds.) It doesn't take breaking into your wireless network and could be done from anywhere on the Internet, so, if it's any consolation, don't worry about your wireless settings.
Stephen
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