How to Enable Encryption on Your Router
With a little poking around you should have no problem finding the encryption settings for your router.
How to Check If Your Router Uses Encryption
You can use your phone or tablet to see if a wireless network is using encryption. All you need to know is the name of the network.
Why You Need Encryption and Why WEP Is Weak
If your wireless network is open with no encryption enabled, you’re inviting neighbors and other freeloaders to steal the bandwidth that you’re paying good money for. So, if you’re experiencing slow internet speeds, a bunch of folks might be using your wireless network. There was a time when WEP was the standard for securing wireless networks, but it was eventually cracked and is now easily bypassed by novice hackers using cracking tools available on the internet. After WEP came WPA. WPA had flaws, too, and was replaced by WPA2, which isn’t perfect but is currently the best available offering for protecting home-based wireless networks. Next came WPA3. If you set up your Wi-Fi router years ago, you could be using one of the old, hackable encryption schemes such as WEP, and should consider changing to WPA3.
