MurPhil wrote:
Maybe my next comment below will show whether or not I have at least a partial understanding of what you said.
The SSID associated with my old, defunct network/router and the SSID associated with my current network/router are not the same. I surmise, therefore, that there shouldn’t be any credential conflicts ?!
No. As long as you make your devices "forget" the network with the unwanted SSID, and don't select it again, they shouldn't try either to auto-join that network, or to switch to it when they see that its signal is stronger.
Auto-join – what your Mac or your iPhone does when it's not joined to a Wi-Fi network, but sees a SSID that it recognizes. It will try to connect to that network, using a stored copy of the Wi-Fi password from the previous association.
Switching between access points with the same SSID – what Wi-Fi clients do when they're already joined to a network, they see multiple access points with the same SSID, and signal strengths make it attractive to switch access points.
Say, you're in a shopping mall or airport that has free public WiFi. You connect your phone to the free network, and walk from one end of the building to another. Chances are very good that your phone will switch from one access point to another, as you walk, without giving you any clue this is happening (except for WiFi still working hundreds of feet away from the place where you started walking).
What is the likelihood that someone else has inadvertently used the exact same SSID for their own network/router as was the SSID of my old network/router?
It depends very much on the name. I remember that a lot of new routers used to come with default SSIDs and/or router passwords (as opposed to Wi-Fi passwords) such as "SSID", "password", and "NetGear." If you're talking about gear supplied by your ISP, you might find that many of your neighbors have SSIDs with, say, "Spectrum" in the ID, even though there are additional letters or hexadecimal digits to make the names unique.
If your old SSID was a default name, or a very generic one, or based on a first name that lots of people have, the fact that the other network used the exact same SSID may indeed have been entirely innocuous.
The more you made your SSID distinctive, the less likely it is that someone got the same one by default, or chose the same one with no intention to "steal" your SSID. If your SSID was "Dracula's_Castle" and your neighbor "just happened" to have the same SSID, that would be pretty suspicious.
What is the likelihood that someone else has deliberately “stolen” my old SSID network credentials?
Would this pose any security/privacy threats to my personal WAN and/or LAN communications?
And if so, what would those threats likely be?
How problematic could this be for my internet security/privacy?
Should I be worried and do something ASAP to mitigate it?
Your neighbor could try "sniffing" your packets. They wouldn't even need to run a cable into your house, or get you to connect to their Wi-Fi router, to do this.
If you were using your own Wi-Fi router, turning on WPA 2 or 3 security with AES encryption keys would offer a degree of protection, both against them decoding your traffic, and against them getting to do things like using your printer, or trying to gain access to files stored on a local NAS (network-attached storage) unit.
Locking your network also makes it hard for someone to park on the street in front of your house, and use your Wi-Fi Internet service to send their spam, or launch their hack attack against someone else.
But let's say you were running without any Wi-Fi security.
When you connect to a Web site using the https protocol (the 's' stands for security), your computer and the Web site set up an extra layer of security to protect the contents of the conversation from eavesdroppers. It doesn't guarantee that you're talking to a safe or legitimate Web site, but it means that someone who was "sniffing" a https Web conversation would mostly see packet headers and such. They might be able to tell that you were talking to a bank, and determine which bank it was (from the IP address), but the encryption would make it difficult for them to steal your bank account password or see your bank balances as you are displaying them on your computer screen.
If you connected to a site using http (no 's'), there would be no such added security … so if there happened to be no Wi-Fi security, and no IPv6 security, and no https security either, the whole interaction would be an open book to anyone willing to take the trouble to eavesdrop on it.
BTW, what does the acronym OP stand for? I’m only aware of OS (operating system)?
Original Post or Original Poster. (This site puts the word "Author" next to the name of the original poster.)
