Q&A: How can I regain control of my hacked router?

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Question from Barbara: Hi, Rick. I have a very urgent problem and I need your help, ASAP!

Everything was fine when I went to bed last night, but when I woke up this morning and turned on my laptop to check my email, the laptop couldn’t find my WiFi network.

I had it scan for available networks and it found just one (and it had a really nasty name that I can’t repeat here).

I first thought it might be a neighbor’s WiFi signal that was straying into my house, but then I noticed that it was a really strong signal.

Since it was so strong I figured this strange WiFi signal had to be coming from my own router, and sure enough when I unplugged my router the “nasty” WiFi network disappeared.

It appears that someone has hacked my router somehow but I don’t know how to take back control of it because it won’t accept my password. Can you help?

Rick’s answer: You’re absolutely right, Barbara. It sounds like someone has indeed taken control of your router and set up a malicious WiFi network on it.

And that’s not a good thing because they can do all kinds of horrible things online and the IP address will be traced back to YOU! I strongly recommend that you take care of this immediately.

Luckily, it should be pretty easy to regain control of your router by resetting it back to its factory settings.

A factory reset will wipe out that rogue WiFi network and allow you to log in to the router using it’s default username and password. Once you have signed into the router’s settings screen you should be able to give the router a new login password and set up a new WiFi network on it, locking the hacker of both.

Your router’s user manual should have step-by-step instructions for performing the factory reset. If you don’t have a physical copy of the manual you should be able to find a digital version online by Googling the brand and model of the router along with the words user manual.

Note: If you have trouble tracking down a digital copy of the manual just send me an email and I’ll try my best to help.

Update from Barbara: Thanks a lot, Rick. I reset the router and set up a new WiFi network on it and everything seems to be working great.