Ask Leo! #584 – Stopping Spam, Hacking Facebook, MAC vs. IP, and more…

'In order to know which MAC addresses can access your LAN, sniffing is not enough. You need to access the router and there you can see the list.' - That's totally and completely incorrect.

'The main reason I go through such great trouble is that encryption and decryption of every packet of data will delay the transfer a bit. - Unless somebody is using hardware that's a decade or more old, the loss performance loss will be minimal. Imperceptible, in fact.

'I use 'WhoIsOnMyWiFi' which tells me when something I did not authorize tries to connect.' - Which is all well and good if you happen to be at home - and awake! - to take the necessary action. Otherwise, it'll do nothing to keep people off your network.

Bottom line: WPA2 is a better and far more secure choice.

'Those who make available original creative work are going to have to come up with a different pricing structure.' - Phooey. The pricing structure is completely irrelevant. E-books that would cost a buck to buy are illegally shared. It's not done because people can't afford a buck or don't consider the book to be worth a buck; it's done because people can avoid paying the buck by stealing the book - and know they'll almost certainly get away with it.

The 'I only do it because companies charge too much' line has been used since file sharing became popular in the 1990s. The excuse was bogus then, and it's even more bogus now. Services such as Netflix, Spotify and Kindle Unlimited provide very cheap access an enormous collection of movies, TV shows, music and books - and yet people still choose to download material illegally. Why?

As I said, illegal file sharing has nothing to do with things being overpriced; it has to do with people not wanting to pay anything at all and preferring to steal.

To say that 'Those who make available original creative work are going to have to come up with a different pricing structure,' is absolutely ridiculous. It's like suggesting that Best Buy have to come up with a different pricing structure to stop people stealing TVs.

"backing up, keeping your other tools up-to-date, and using your own common sense when it comes to malware." that's about your BEST defense against these bloody things. they're actually very easy to avoid (and/or deal with) if you do this.

As noted in other comments, it appears that your site is one of the ones you are advising people not to visit! That persistent stripe at the side of the page is ANNOYING in the extreme. If you must have it, put it at the bottom of your page and don't harass people with its annoying presence, especially since you offer no way to turn it 'off'.

If you hover over it there's a "go away" icon beneath it. I need it because it works. Without it and things like it Ask Leo! simply could not survive. I get exceptionally few complaints about it. (I know, not all annoyed complain, but even so ... exceptionally few.)

But, yes, if my comparatively small amount of advertising - required to keep this site free - is something that you're not willing to tolerate, then indeed I'd expect you not to come back. The alternative is for my site not to exist at all. I prefer that it exist so that the people who are more tolerant will continue to find help and resources.

There's much more about the topic, including specific Ask Leo! examples, in Can we no longer view websites without getting pop-ups?