How to Kick People Off Your
WiFi Network

How Can I Indirectly Detect Who Is Using My WiFi?

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How to kick someone off your WiFi so you can enjoy your Internet connection to its maximum capacity and never deal with slowdowns and connection drops ever again? Our secret weapon, our mighty WiFi user blocker, won’t be any expensive hardware device nor software application. Instead, we will rely solely on the capabilities that are already present in your router, although we will recommend a few useful software tools.

There are many signs that can tell you that someone who shouldn’t is using
your WiFi:

• Poor speeds: If your Internet speeds are mediocre even though you are not downloading any files or streaming high-definition video content, the chances are that someone who isn’t you is doing just that on your expense. This is especially true if you experience the slowdowns only at certain times of the day, such as in the evening, after your neighbor has returned home from work.


• High latency: Latency is the time it takes for a message to travel from a user’s computer to an Internet server. The symptoms of high latency are most noticeable in real-time applications, such as Skype or online games. For example, you might send a message only to see it reach your conversation partner with a noticeable delay. Or you might click on the fire button in a game and miss because your opponent has already moved elsewhere.


• Router reboots: To some extent, it’s perfectly normal for routers to reboot from time to time. A reboot might be triggered by the router itself for maintenance purposes, or it might be triggered by a software update pushed by the router’s manufacturer. But if your router reboots all the time, something suspicious is going on. Someone might be trying to access your WiFi network using brute force, and you should know how to block WiFi users to prevent this from happening.


• Lack of encryption: If, for some reason, your WiFi network isn’t encrypted using either the WPA or the WPA2 security protocol, then you can be sure that someone either is or recently has been on your WiFi network. To this day, countless older routers use the WEP security protocol, which has been considered obsolete for a long time. If you own such a router, get rid of it right now otherwise our advice how to kick people off your WiFi won’t actually help you in any meaningful way.

What Are the Possible Consequences for Someone Who Is on My WiFi?

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When an unauthorized user accesses a computer network, he or she might be committing a real crime, depending on which legal code the unauthorized user falls under. For example, unauthorized access, modification, or impairment of data held in a computer system is a federal offence under Australia’s Criminal Code Act 1995. In Japan, accessing a wireless LAN network without authorization is not a crime, even if the network is protected with a password. In the United States, there are various federal and state laws addressing the issue of unauthorized access to wireless networks, with some laws requiring monetary damages and others criminalizing the mere unauthorized access of a network.

Most people who access WiFi networks without authorization don’t realize that they could be committing a crime, so a simple warning is often enough to scare away most intruders. If you live in an apartment building, you could, for example, post a sign saying, “I know about the person who is connected to my network, and I also know that WiFi stealing is a punishable crime”.

How to Check Who Is on My WiFi?

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If you want to block WiFi users, software solutions are not needed because your router most likely already comes with blocking capabilities built-in.

First of all, you need to find out what your router’s gateway IP address is and type the address into your browser. Cisco and Linksys routers have a default address of 192.168.1.1, but the address varies from manufacturers to manufacturer. Look at the back of your router and, if it isn’t there, look
for it online.

Upon entering your router’s gateway IP address into your browser, you will be taken to the router’s admin interface and prompted to enter the admin username and password. In most cases, both the username and password
are “admin”.

Next, use the navigation menu to display a list of all attached devices. You should see a name and MAC address of each connected device. If you spot a device that looks like it shouldn’t be on the list, you’ve most likely spotted a WiFi thief. You can either disconnect the unauthorized device or block the device’s MAC address altogether to prevent the device from connecting to your network in the future.

How Can I See What Devices Are Within the Range of My WiFi?

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Now that you know how to see who is on your WiFi, you might be wondering how to tell who is within the range of your WiFi network. You can measure how far your network reaches with the help of a professional app for wireless site surveys and WiFi analysis, such as NetSpot, which is widely considered to be the best free WiFi analyzer for Windows and Mac computers.

With NetSpot, you can easily create a WiFi signal strength heatmap to see how far from your router it is still possible to connect, and NetSpot can also highlight signal weak spots, helping you optimize your network for maximum performance. To download NetSpot and explore all of its features, visit its official website and try it for free.