Have you ever had the suspicion that your neighbor steals your Wi-Fi? Do you still use the password that came by default with the router and noticed for a while that your internet connection no longer works as well as before?
If the answer is yes, but all you have are suspicions, the best you can do is get down to work to confirm them. For this, you can use a free program for Windows called Wireless Network Watcher, a small tool for your PC that is responsible for identifying all the devices connected to your wireless network.
How to Use Wireless Network Watcher to Detect Wi-Fi Intruders and Thieves
To detect an intruder, you can try a very simple trick using this convenient tool.
- Download the program from the official website of Wireless Network Watcher.
- Unzip the ZIP file and run the program. Don’t worry, as it is a portable application. You don’t need to install it on your computer.
- Wireless Network Watcher will automatically perform a first scan, showing a list of all the devices connected to your local network, including the router and the rest of the network components you may have installed.
In this list for each of the connected devices, you will see its local IP address, the MAC address, its name (if defined), along with other data and information. The question is clear: How can you know which of these devices is the intruder?
To find out, what you will do is turn off all the devices that are connected to the Wi-Fi network, one by one. In the end, when they are all off, run Wireless Network Watcher again. If everything has gone correctly, you should only see 2 connected devices: your router and the PC from which you are executing the query.
If there are any more devices, that means you have just detected your particular Wi-Fi thief.
What to do if you detect unauthorized devices on your Wi-Fi network
Now that you know the IP and MAC address of the intruder, you can block access by adding it to the router’s block list. Another option would be to create a whitelist where only your own devices are authorized. Or, if you prefer, you can also try to change the Wi-Fi password to a more secure password.
