Tom,
I have my wireless router set up to only communicate with my laptop by
using 128 bit encryption. That might also be an option on yours. I could
also configure it to only communicate with the MAC address that is
associated with my laptop's wireless card. It's a new Belkin pre-N version,
it's advertised as having 8 times the range and 6 times the speed of the "G"
version.
Paul

"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 6 Dec 2004 07:53:59 -0500, "Eisboch"
wrote:


"Harry Krause" wrote in message
news:1102336618.09d33faec01ccec4b377cac6c4f8bed9 @teranews...


I believe our friend Tom frequents places he shouldn't...and picks up
doses of things polite folks don't mention in public!

This past summer I had a new laptop on the Navigator. I bought it because
it had a built in WiFi setup and the marina had WiFi service.

Within a month, I picked up some kind of worm, bug, virus, disease or
whatever that affected the search engines. Once in a while, instead of
displaying the results of my search, it would direct the computer to a
porn
site. I really have no interest in these sites and had never purposely
visited any, but somehow the computer became infected with something.

Since then, I've learned more about WiFi service and it seems you have to
be
very careful. Other people can apparently piggy-back on your computer to
gain access to the Internet.

Since switching to Firefox on that computer, I have had no further
problems. That reminds me. I've got to download Firefox and Thunderbird
and
install them on this laptop.

And that's another whole subject. I have a wireless router and I keep
the firewall off because of the XP firewall and a specific firewall to
the computer - but...

There are several wireless computers surrounding the homestead in
other homes and I have been infected several times via that route. I
now keep the wireless portion of the router off until I need it.

Even then, I keep a Spy Eye running in the background to make sure
nobody is piggy backing on me.

Later,

Tom