How can I make my wireless internet more secure?

Do these to things. Login to your router. On a LInksys router, you go to the wireless tab, and then you go to the wireless security sub tab. I would tell it to use WPA 2. Also on the main wireless tab, make sure you change your SSID to something different. This is the name of your wireless network. Once you set a WPA2 passphrase and rename your SSID, you will have to go into the list of wireless networks and reconnect to your network. In Vista, click Start, start typing in "network sharing center." Once it comes up, click on it. Click the Connect to a Network link on the left side. Now connect to your new network name. It will then prompt you for the password. Depending on your wireless computer, it may or may not support WPA2. You may have to set it to WPA instead of WPA2. Use WPA2 if possible. You should tell your computers to connect to this network automatically. Once all wireless computers are connected, go back into your router and disable your SSID broadcast. This will creat a double password protection. Hackers will have to know your WPA password and SSID if you disable the broadcast. But again, don't disable it until you set the security up. Once that is done, you are now ready for setting up MAC filtering. To find your MAC address, click Start, click run in xp (skip in vista), type this command: cmd, press enter. Type this command: ipconfig /all and press enter. Your physical address is your MAC address. Try to see if you can setup a MAC filter. In the wireless tab and MAC filtering sub tab, tell the router you want only these MAC addresses accessing the wireless network. There are usually 2 options: permit all MAC addresses on the filtering list to access the network or deny all mac addressses on the filtering list to access the network. Usuually it is on the one that denies by default. You want the option where it permits all MAC addresses on the list. The big thing is making sure you enable the password. MAC filtering is not absolutely necessary, but it gives a war driver more of a difficult time hacking into your network.

Well It's his network, he can look at anything he wants that goes through it but there are a few ways to make it difficult. I guess use SSL (type "https" instead of "http" in your URL bar), also Google a bit about how to encrypt your connection. Unless he's some kind of hacker wiz kid I wouldn't worry much.

hanz is right ninja is wrong. encrypt the url with https (very) easy. if your sharing a router wired or wireless you can watch data passing though using wireshark