Recomended settings PCIe GBE Family Controller for privacy

[Bearbiker52]

Just a general concern for privacy, on my NIC card and gateway stock from HP, as well as performance...where should we draw the line and consider ourselves safe?

Being disabled and pretty much not able to work no longer with a life threatning illness, and not much in my bank account, I have not much to worry about this.
However I dont want my typical neighborhood kid hacking on my connection either, it tends to slow down your bandwidth...Suggestions??? Whats the best based advice you can give a guy like me....
Concerning my gateway as well...

BTW I used to be a stage tech...so pretty savy in these areas 🙂

Chris

 

[bill001g]

From a security standpoint you should always assume someone can see any and all traffic that is leaving your computer. So you need to ensure that anything you are concern about is encrypted. All that really means to most users is to use HTTPS rather than HTTP. Most bank site change over automatically. For other sites like tomshardware forums...do you really care if someone see what you are posting and reading.

Someone hacking you your connection or attacking you computer is another type of issue. I would use a router even if you only have a single PC. Because of the NAT translation a router does you get the main feature of a firewall (protection from outside attack) just because the router is too stupid to know where to send attacking packets.

Wireless is the only other way they could compromise you and the best advice is if you do not need wireless then disable it. If you need it you follow the recommended security setup of use WPA, use a unique SSID, use a key that is a minimum of 8 characters contain special symbols... and disable WPS if your router has that feature.

 

[Bearbiker52]

Thanks Much, I have done all this, appreciate it greatly.

C