#43 Is Your Home Being Hacked?

Facebook, email, websites, blogs. These are all things that we need to be concerned about when it comes to hackers, because hackers seem to be targeting those more and more these days.

But when is the last time you thought about whether your home is being hacked? Think about it: How many computers do you have in your house?

I may be different than the average person because I work on computers all day long, but I have several in my office. And in the house, we have iPads, tablets, and we have our cell phones.

And, each and every one of those is hooked to the Wi-Fi and main modem of the house.

That modem has one password, so every single item inside of our house is all dependent on that one password.

If a hacker can find that password, then they have access to every single piece of electronics hooked to it.

But it’s not only computers anymore. We’re getting a new oven soon, and that new oven has Wi Fi on it so we can actually control the oven remotely. That means a hacker, if they got into our system, could control our oven through our Wi Fi.

That could create a very serious issue.

When’s the last time you thought about whether your home could get hacked? How easy is that password on your modem or your router? Most homes these days have a modem from the company or a modem you bought yourself coming into your house or business.

That modem is hooked to a router, and then the router is what has your Wi Fi and hard-wired items on it.

Each of those has its own password. Do you know what they are? Do you know how to find them?

If you don’t, learn it quick.

Get on the internet and do a search for the make and model of your modem and your router. Make sure that you get the logins and the passwords written down. And if you’ve never changed the password, that means the password is the default password that came with it, which is usually 1234 or 12345.

if you’ve never changed your modem or your router, now all the hackers know your password (they already did).

You need to change that immediately and change it to something cryptic, as cryptic as you can. And of course you want to write it down.

I recommend writing it on a piece of paper, which is funny when you think about it.

Back in high school, if we wanted to hack a computer, we would look around that computer for the password. The person usually had it written somewhere close. I used to tell people to never leave their password near their computer.

Now, nobody looks for the password near the computer (mostly because most hackers live in a different country now).

So, go ahead and write your password down and tape that piece of paper to the bottom of your modem and the bottom of your router. It is very unlikely that somebody is going to look on the bottom of your modem or router to try to hack you, unless you have a lot of your kids’ friends around. Then maybe you might not want to do it that way.

But think of a way to have a place to write down the login and the password of your modem and your router so that you don’t forget it. And once every six months to a year, just like your email, just like the backend of your website, change that password.

If you’re not changing your passwords every six months, I recommend you start doing that because remember, we generally use one email address as the login. Now that email address probably won’t be on your modem or router, but they could both default to “admin,” and you may not be able to change it.

If you haven’t yet, listen to episode number 33 “Never Get Hacked Again.”

That episode gives you tips and tricks on how to set up both login names and passwords to make it more difficult for hackers to get in.

Your modem and router may have a login of admin and you may not be able to change it. For newer modems and routers, you should be able to change that and I would change the login and the password. That way the hackers aren’t going to know either one and they have to know both.

Remember, it’s not just your password they need to know, they need to know your login as well.

So go in to your modem and your router. And make sure that you’ve got those passwords to be changed and make them cryptic use letters and numbers. Use some capital and some not.

I talked about this trick a long time ago, here’s a way to create a cryptic password you can remember.

You can use a password like “Ilovemydog.” But instead of the letter I use the number one instead of the letter O use zero and now all of a sudden you have letters and numbers in your password and it’s a password that would be difficult to be hacked. Here it is: 1L0v3myd0g. That is cryptic, and yet one that you still might remember.

Cat owners, I don’t recommend saying “I love my cat.” And yes, I am just joking. I have cats too. So we have both in our family.

Of course, my dogs are sitting here in my office while the cat is sitting outside saying “What do you think you’re doing? Why are you in that in that box when there’s all those woods to explore?”

And so I do love my dogs and cats, they’re both awesome in their own way.

Think about it a saying that will make a great cryptic phrase you will remember, be it “I love my dog,” “I love my cat,” or something like that.

But it doesn’t even have to be that, it could be “my wife (husband)is awesome.” Think of a sentence that you can use that you’ll remember but one that where you can interchange letters with numbers.

That’s one of the best passwords you can come up with, especially if you use one that has an S in it because you can change the S to $. That way you’ve got symbols as well; that’s one of the best passwords you can have, with letters, numbers and symbols.

This is very important, so please share this with your friends, I really appreciate it. People need to know to look for this kind of stuff. This is very important. hackers are really starting to get into every part of our lives. And I think they’re really going to start trying to hack our houses even more than they were before. Have a great day.

– Dr. Ty Belknap, CEO, Port Bell SEO