How do prevent my Mac from joining an insecure network that may be more powerful than my preferred network but may also be a hacker?

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Level 1

9 points

How do prevent my Mac from joining an insecure network that may be more powerful than my preferred network but may also be a hacker?

Hackers have been through my neighborhood recently, trying to hack into private networks and devices.

My Mac seems to have a very unsafe tendency to switch over to which ever network is strongest, rather than my "preferred" network if I restart or wake it up. I only just noticed this today when my download speed was ridiculously low and I checked to see what network it was connected to.

How do I force my Mac to ASK any time it wants to connect to a network OTHER THAN the network(s) I trust? Should my Mac EVER do this switching? I would have thought Mac engineers would know about the dangers unsecure network connections and protect their users.

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.13

Posted on Jul 4, 2020 10:13 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Axel Foley

Level 10

149,220 points

Jul 4, 2020 10:31 PM in response to Scoey

Open System Preferences ➔ Network ➔ Network Name.

Here Cycle through all the WiFi Network that your MacBook Pro has connected to. Make sure that Automatically Join this Network is only checked for the WiFi Network(s) that you want your MacBook Pro to connect with. Make sure that Ask to join new networks is also checked so that you will be asked before your MacBook Pro joins a new network when your preferred network(s) is not available.

See image below -

Axel F.

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