With all the Wireless craze going on, there are hackers out looking for information.  Wireless is much easier then going through wired.  Hackers target these networks for this reason.  When you start to build your wireless network, be sure to enable security (encryption) even if you don't think you are in a bad area or have bad neighbors, you might be wrong.  Here are the types of security that are offered with most routers:

Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) was the first such protocol. Introduced in 1997, it was designed, among other things, to secure emails and text-based Web pages over cellular networks.

Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) is another protocol. With the rise of wi-fi networks, came the need for a new security standard. Described in the IEEE's 802.11b spec, WEP uses a 40-bit encryption key and was expected to provide the same level of security as hard-wired LANs. It didn't.

Wi-fi Protected Access (WPA) was the next attempt at improving security. It includes a more advanced encryption method -- Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) -- and requires strong user authentication, including the 802.1x standard.

WPA2, also called 802.11i, is a security standard approved by the IEEE in June of 2004. It incorporates WPA, but also uses the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), which has, so far, proven to be unbreakable and meets federal security requirements (FIPS 140-2). It also includes key caching, making it faster for a user to reestablish a dropped connection.

Ways to enable this can be done manually or automatically using the program that came with your equipment.  Here are some steps to keeping your network safe:

1. Change your SSID or network name often
2. Disable network name broadcast, so when comptuers search for wireless networks, yours is invisible
3. Change the defualt password to access your wireless device
4. Enable that security, it doenst hurt anything

Make sure and enable some security, wireless is the future.  Also download some anti-virus/anit-spyware protection.  Download Norton, Mcafee, or Zonealarm.  All offer wireless security protection.