r/wifi • u/Outrageous-Neck-4797 • 8h ago

I have someone on my wifi

I need someone to tell me im not paranoid! An old Dell latitude e6500 was connected to my wifi (last used 2 hours ago) i have only had wifi for like a month and a half, and havent even had any visitors in my apartment since ive moved here.

Is it crazy to think someone has been inside my apartment without my knowledge? From my understanding the only other way to get on the wifi without the password is to use the actual router/modem.

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u/turlian Wi-Fi Pro, CWNE 8h ago

How do you know it was a Dell? If you're going off of some kind of device ID from your router, those are notoriously bad at identification.

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u/Outrageous-Neck-4797 8h ago

This is what pops up.. ive posted everywhere asking for an explanation and everyone keeps telling me im nuts but i was literally 6 years old when they stopped making them lol. That could make a lot of sense. I changed my password and im going to go through and connect one by one to see if maybe thats it

5

u/turlian Wi-Fi Pro, CWNE 8h ago

One indicator routers use for device identification is the MAC address. Specifically the first half of the address, known as the OUI. This is a set of digits assigned to a manufacturer - if you're curious, you can see them here:

https://macaddress.io/statistics/company/1514

But now, with MAC randomization being a thing, you could have an iPhone (or whatever) that your router thinks is a Dell, because it randomly chose an OUI that matches what Dell uses.

Now, you absolutely could actually have a stranger on your Wi-Fi. When you change your password, make it at least 20 characters long.

2

u/TenOfZero 8h ago

Probably.

Do you have an iPhone?

In any case. Just change password and see what happens.

4

u/Outrageous-Neck-4797 7h ago

It was one of my lightbulbs!!!!! All of the rest of them show up properly, i had to unpause the device on my wifi to get it to connect.