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fishacura
join:2008-01-25
Phoenixville, PA

fishacura to danclan

Member

to danclan

Re: Router id/pw

But how do people set up and/or change their WPA/WEP passwords???

aaronwt
Premium Member
join:2004-11-07
Woodbridge, VA
Asus RT-AX89

aaronwt

Premium Member

said by fishacura:

But how do people set up and/or change their WPA/WEP passwords???

They don't. Most people keep it what it was set originally. When I got the 150/65 tier and they gave me another router. They gave me a booklet with the password written in it. The first thing I did was login and change the password. Then I turned off the wireless radio. Then I disconnected router and plugged my own router into the ONT connection. So this new gigabit router will sit there gathering dust along with the other three routers that FiOS gave me.
fishacura
join:2008-01-25
Phoenixville, PA

fishacura

Member

Amazing....so any TECH who's out installing FIOS could easily have your personal info. NUTS!

danclan
join:2005-11-01
Midlothian, VA

danclan

Member

said by fishacura:

Amazing....so any TECH who's out installing FIOS could easily have your personal info. NUTS!

When they handle dozens of these a day its HIGHLY NOT likely. They truly have better things to do than track each pw at every home.
fishacura
join:2008-01-25
Phoenixville, PA

fishacura

Member


You're more trusting than I am. I could easily see someone making a racket out of compiling that info and either selling it and/or doing a "drive by" a month down the road and hacking into the network to get personal info. If there are hundreds of techs doing these installations, it's absurd to think there aren't at least a few rotten apples.

danclan
join:2005-11-01
Midlothian, VA

danclan

Member

said by fishacura:

You're more trusting than I am. I could easily see someone making a racket out of compiling that info and either selling it and/or doing a "drive by" a month down the road and hacking into the network to get personal info. If there are hundreds of techs doing these installations, it's absurd to think there aren't at least a few rotten apples.

actually no...it would be far more suspicious to see a car parked outside your home with someone on a laptop attempting to access your wireless network.

In today's paranoid environment that would be riskier so you can take off your tinfoil hat and relax. There are more places that have more people that have access to far more details about your life than your verizon installer.
fishacura
join:2008-01-25
Phoenixville, PA

fishacura

Member

Not at all...I'm not one of those "how dare you ask for my license" people. However, to knowingly allow someone to know any user id/pw is just bad practice. A car parked in the open in the country versus someone on a laptop in an urban environment are at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Again, I'm not saying go live in your bunker...but there's a big difference between very minor steps to securing you personal information and putting on a tin foil hat.
lijacobs
join:2010-07-30
Woodmere, NY

lijacobs to fishacura

Member

to fishacura
said by fishacura:

If there are hundreds of techs doing these installations, it's absurd to think there aren't at least a few rotten apples.

Speaking from decades of experience, you are absolutely wrong about the integrety of the VZ techs.

birdfeedr
MVM
join:2001-08-11
Warwick, RI

birdfeedr to fishacura

MVM

to fishacura
said by fishacura:

But how do people set up and/or change their WPA/WEP passwords???

Although in any barrel of apples, you'll find a bad one, I don't think the metaphor applies to VZ techs. Their performance metric includes numbers of installs, and they have to hustle to keep their numbers up. They don't have time to be villains.

Ok, so I made that part up, only a VZ tech could confirm that part.

But I will say, in my experience the first thing the install tech did was show me how to log in, showed me how he was changing to password1 (in the old days), and asked me if I wanted to change it. When I did, he was looking away, and he told me to remember the password, and how a hard reset would start everything back at default.

Do they still do it that way? Hope so.

Today, a hard reset starts at a login screen that asks you to set your own password.

Even if a FiOS tech knew someone's router password, it wouldn't do much good for very long because at the first sign of trouble, tech support advises a reboot, and if that doesn't fix the problem a hard reset or a replacement router is the next course of action.

Somewhere in all that process, folks learn about accessing the GUI configuration. Slow but sure.

Of course that doesn't do anything to help someone setting their password to ABC123.

More Fiber
MVM
join:2005-09-26
Cape Coral, FL

More Fiber to fishacura

MVM

to fishacura
said by fishacura:

so any TECH who's out installing FIOS could easily have your personal info.

So what if he has the router password?

What does it get him unless you've explicitly enabled remote access to the router GUI (it's disabled by default)?