Technology

The biggest Wi-Fi mistake you didn’t know you were making

Published

3 days ago

December 31, 2024

The biggest Wi-Fi mistake you didn’t know you were making

You’ve got dinner in the oven, you’re looking for extra glasses, and your cousin’s kid screams (again), “What’s the Wi-Fi password?” You’re juggling a hundred things at once, and the last thing you want to do is to spell out your password.

Here’s the good news: You can slap a printout on the fridge, and everyone can scan it with their phones to connect. But first, I’ll show you how to create a separate network so you don’t need to worry about little Billy getting into your personal stuff on your devices and computers.

SCAMMERS ARE TARGETING TEENS WITH THESE NASTY TRICKS

I share smart tech news and tips you can use every single day. Join 600K readers who get The Current.

Be my guest

When guests connect to your main Wi-Fi, they can potentially access devices like smart TVs, printers, and even your laptop or phone if file sharing is enabled. Worse, if their device is compromised, your whole network could be at risk. A guest network keeps everyone happy while keeping your private life private.

Most modern routers let you set up a guest network without having to be a tech guru. Warning: This will take you a few minutes, but it’s totally doable.

RELATED: Is your internet slo-o-o-w? Let’s fix that.

Step 1: Log into your router’s admin console. You’ll need your IP address. You can usually find this on a sticker on the bottom or side of your router. Seeing 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1 is common.

( Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

If you don’t see yours …

On Windows: Open the Start menu, search for “Command Prompt” and, with your Command Prompt open, type in ipconfig and press Enter. Look for the line that says “Default Gateway.” This is your router’s IP address.
On Mac: Go to System Settings > Network. Select your Wi-Fi network > Advanced. Your router’s IP address is under Router.

Step 2: Open your browser, type http:// and paste in your IP address. Hit Enter to open a login page. For the credentials, try the username admin and the word password for the password. If the defaults are different, they’re likely printed on your router. You can also check this site that lists default passwords for almost every router in use.

Step 3: Look for a setting called Guest Network or Guest Wi-Fi. Give it a different name (aka SSID) than your main network, along with a strong, unique password.

TECH TIP: SAVE YOUR MEMORIES BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE

If you have snoops in the family … When family and friends connect to your Wi-Fi guest network, you can block them from accessing your files or devices on your primary network. Turn off the local access setting.

Sorry, but dedicated snoops won’t stop at one closed door. Here’s a sign someone is poking around.

While you’re at it, a quick security check

Close-up of a young girl using a smart phone while lying alone on her bed at home

Before you finish, take these extra steps to lock things down:

BIOMETRIC DATA: IS IT SAFE TO HAND IT OVER TO ANY COMPANY THAT ASKS?

Change your admin password: If your router still uses the default login, update it.
Update your firmware, too: Check for software updates to keep your router secure from vulnerabilities.

Your network is a bigger target than you realize.

Now for the fun part

Create a QR code that automatically connects guests to your new guest network — no hassle, no drama. With the free site QIFI.org, all you need is three pieces of info:

SSID: This is your Wi-Fi network name. Find it on the back of your modem, in the admin console or on your network app.
Encryption type: Choose WPA/WPA2/WPA3. You can find this in your phone’s Wi-Fi section under the network details.
Key: This is your router password. It’s on the back of your router if you’ve never changed it. (Please tell me you’ve changed it!)

Hit Generate and your QR code is ready. Print some copies of it to hang around the house, or do what I did: Order this custom sign that looks classy. Now, when someone asks for the Wi-Fi password, you can just point.

Get tech-smarter on your schedule

Award-winning host Kim Komando is your secret weapon for navigating tech.

Technology

Answering your questions about AI, smart glasses, TikTok, and more

Published

5 hours ago

January 3, 2025

Press Room

Answering your questions about AI, smart glasses, TikTok, and more

As promised, I’ve got a special mailbag issue this week. Thanks to everyone who sent in questions. Like last year, I picked a handful that hit some of the themes I plan to continue covering in 2025.

I’m really concerned / worried / curious about the near-term future. Between now and 10 years from now, I think it is very clear AI will be replacing many job functions. What are we all going to do?

The leaders at the AI labs say that, yes, there will be job loss, but that doesn’t mean catastrophe. The optimistic take is that humans are creative and will invent new jobs, like they always have when technology changes things. At the moment, there’s also a macro belief among the CEOs driving a lot of the spending on infrastructure for AI that its impact will be deflationary and lead to GDP growth.

Job displacement will still be painful, of course. Sam Altman and others believe that some form of universal basic income will be necessary to offset the economic impacts of AGI. Altman has his other startup, Tools for Humanity, already scanning eyeballs and distributing cryptocurrency. But I think it’s way too early to be seriously concerned. As Altman himself recently said, AGI is going to be declared soon and we probably won’t notice.

How much better is the reasoning on AI models, and is it actually something I should care about?

I know people who have tried ChatGPT’s o1 pro mode and notice a difference. But I haven’t seen anything mind-blowing from o1 or what Noam Shazeer at Google just put out, though perhaps I am a bit jaded by the last two years of AI hype. My advice would be to play with what you can access / afford and see for yourself.

The expense of running these cutting-edge “reasoning” models is currently keeping them at bay for a lot of people. I expect access to widen significantly in 2025. Knowing how to prompt these different kinds of models effectively remains a struggle, and I’d like to see more interface improvements in apps like ChatGPT to help teach people why they should use a reasoning model. An even better move would be to abstract away all these definitions and focus on what tools can do for people.

What kind of outlook do you see for Snap in 2025 and beyond?

Snap’s biggest problem going into 2025 is the same problem it had going into 2024: its business isn’t growing fast enough. The app itself is bigger than ever and growing quickly, but yearly revenue growth last quarter was less than Meta’s. That’s not a compelling pitch to Wall Street when you are already viewed as the underdog. Even with ads being placed in the Chat tab and the new Spotlight redesign slowly rolling out, the jury is out on if the business can rebound to the pace it needs to this year.

A depressed stock price makes it harder to recruit and retain talent, which has become more of a problem for Snap in the last couple of years. I do think the vibe could shift quickly if TikTok does end up being banned in the US or severely hamstrung by a new ownership structure.

I continue to be skeptical of Evan Spiegel’s commitment to hardware with Spectacles. As I’ve written before, his foresight and ambition to build AR glasses is admirable. But Snap looks increasingly outgunned in hardware.

What do you expect from Meta’s glasses in 2025?

There have been a couple of reports recently saying that Meta is planning to ship a pair of smart glasses with a heads-up display this year. I first reported this was going to happen in February 2023. Hypernova, as the product is internally referred to at Meta, will have a viewfinder for interacting with things like Meta AI and notifications.

In my write-up of the Orion prototype, I spent a lot of time on the neural wristband because it’s going to ship with Hypernova as a way to control them (while Orion’s commercial successor is still a couple years out at least). I expect this band to be the part of the glasses that surprises people the most. Using it for the first time feels like magic. As I reported in 2023, Meta is also planning a separate smartwatch as an optional upgrade with the neural capability and more features for health tracking, etc. It’s going to be a very interesting year for Meta on the hardware front.

Is TikTok going to actually be banned?

No one I’ve spoken with who is in a position to know thinks that China will let TikTok be fully divested from ByteDance. The algorithm definitely won’t be sold, but as I’ve explained before, that isn’t as important a factor as it was the last time TikTok was facing a ban.

At the same time, there is too much money and power at stake for TikTok to just disappear. President-elect Donald Trump wants to make a deal. The most likely outcome is a different version of the frankensteinian “TikTok Global” joint venture proposal that ByteDance agreed to back in 2020.

I could see Oracle staying involved this second time given Larry Ellison’s ongoing influence at Mar-a-Lago. ByteDance will most likely continue running TikTok day-to-day while divesting some of its ownership stake. The real wild card in all this, however, is Elon Musk, who has had serious TikTok envy since he bought X…

Are you more bullish or bearish on Google than you were a year ago?

Honestly, bullish. It’s going to be difficult to achieve Sundar Pichai’s 2025 mandate of making Gemini a serious rival to ChatGPT on the consumer side, but Google has a fountain of money, the technical talent, and unrivaled distribution.

The company’s challenge is more of a cultural one. The more you have, the more you have to protect. It’s hard to get such a large, sprawling conglomerate to move fast and not care about the risk of backlash. Pichai seems well aware of this and the threats he faces, though.

Even if Google has to end its Search default payments to Apple (which I predict will be the most likely outcome of the DOJ antitrust case), doing so probably hurt Apple’s bottom line more than Google’s, as Eddy Cue himself argued last week.

Then there’s Waymo, which may end up paying for all of Google’s “other bets” failures over the years — and then some.

What is a good book you recommend that falls in line with the things you report on?

A curse of already reading so much for my job is that I rarely want to spend time on a book. The last book I read in full was The Biggest Bluff by Maria Konnikova, which has nothing to do with tech but is super valuable if you are getting into poker. I enjoyed how her story of becoming a pro player is woven into explaining the technicalities of the game.

Technology

Are data brokers endangering your retirement security?

Published

6 hours ago

January 3, 2025

Press Room

Are data brokers endangering your retirement security?

You know, it’s pretty unsettling when you think about it. We spend our whole lives working hard and saving up for retirement. Then, one day, you find out that some company you’ve never heard of is selling your personal information to whoever wants to buy it. It’s not just alarming. It could actually put your financial security at risk.

These companies are data brokers that collect and sell people’s personal information, often without us even knowing about it. And get this: Some of them might be trading info that could affect your retirement savings.

Crazy, right? But don’t worry, it’s not all doom and gloom. There are things we can do to protect ourselves. I want to talk about how these data brokers operate and what steps you can take to keep your retirement plans safe.

GET SECURITY ALERTS, EXPERT TIPS – SIGN UP FOR KURT’S NEWSLETTER – THE CYBERGUY REPORT HERE

A couple working on their retirement plan (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

How data brokers are endangering your retirement security

There’s one major way in which data brokers are endangering your retirement security, and it’s right there in the name: data brokers buy, sell, trade and otherwise spread your personal information far and wide. This endangers your retirement security in three distinct ways, each more dangerous than the last:

1. Spray ‘n’ pray campaigns

They don’t know anything about you, but they have a way to reach you. Even if a scammer knows only your phone number or email address, it’s enough for them to reach out to you. If they don’t know who you are or anything about you, they have to take the most “one-size-fits-all” approach they can manage. Their goal is to get you to respond to them or click a link that leads to a malicious website. Once they learn more about you, they can better tailor their next moves.

2. A fire hose aimed in your general direction

They know what you’re like but not who you are. Scammers can buy ready-made packages of personal information from data brokers. A set like this might include only the phone numbers of people over the age of 60, for example, while another might provide the addresses of elderly people who require live-in care and are experiencing cognitive decline. The potential for abuse is clear. They don’t have to know your name to target a dangerously effective scam at you.

3. A water pistol to the ear

In other words, something aimed right at you and very difficult to ignore. Scammers can also buy shockingly detailed information about you, from your full name to your health care and financial information. These scams are the most dangerous, with the attackers knowing enough about you to breeze past many of your defenses.

Any of the above types of scams can end in what might be the ultimate fraud – identity theft – but these three are more likely to get there, and in fewer steps, than the others.

WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)?

A woman working on her retirement plan (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

MASSIVE DATA BREACH AT FEDERAL CREDIT UNION EXPOSES 240,000 MEMBERS

What you can do to protect your retirement security

You can reduce or avoid many of these risks by stopping data brokers from making it easier for scammers to target you and by arming yourself against the most common and effective tactics they use.

1. Invest in personal data removal services: A trusted personal information removal service can stop data brokers in their tracks from sharing your information. While no service promises to remove all your data from the internet, having a removal service is great if you want to constantly monitor and automate the process of removing your information from hundreds of sites continuously over a longer period of time. Check out my top picks for data removal services here.

2. Don’t click on links: No matter how much pressure or stress a message or phone call puts you under, stick to the golden rule of never following or clicking on links. Always go to the source of the communication via official channels from a secure device to confirm what’s happening. The best way to safeguard yourself from malicious links that install malware, potentially accessing your private information, is to have antivirus software installed on all your devices. This protection can also alert you to phishing emails and ransomware scams, keeping your personal information and digital assets safe. Get my picks for the best 2025 antivirus protection winners for your Windows, Mac, Android and iOS devices.

3. Don’t give out sensitive information: If a message or email can put you under enough pressure to do something you shouldn’t (like follow a link to a phishing site), imagine what a phone call can do. Any request for personal information should raise red flags. If something seems off, hang up.

UNDERSTANDING BRUSHING SCAMS AND HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF

4. Verify identities before handing over money or information: Always verify who you are dealing with before providing any personal details (name, address, date of birth, Social Security number, financial information, etc.) or money. If someone asks for this information or claims they need to send you money, follow this rule: “Hang up, look up and call back.” This applies to phone calls, texts and emails. Hang up or set the message aside, find the legitimate contact information for the organization in question and reach out through official channels (not social media) to confirm the request.

A man counting cash and working on his retirement plan (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

TOP 5 MISTAKES THAT COULD EXPOSE YOUR FINANCIAL DATA TO CYBERCRIMINALS

Kurt’s key takeaways

You know, it’s crazy to think about how much of our personal information is out there, floating around in the digital world. But here’s the thing: We’re not powerless in this situation. Sure, it can feel overwhelming, but there are steps we can take to protect ourselves and our hard-earned retirement savings. It’s all about being aware, staying vigilant and using the tools at our disposal. Remember, your financial security is worth fighting for. So let’s not just sit back and hope for the best. Let’s take action and show those data brokers that we’re not going to be easy targets. After all, we’ve worked too hard for too long to let anyone mess with our golden years, right?

Do you think there should be regulations in place to limit the activities of data brokers, and what specific measures would you like to see implemented to better protect your personal information? Let us know by writing us at Cyberguy.com/Contact.

For more of my tech tips and security alerts, subscribe to my free CyberGuy Report Newsletter by heading to Cyberguy.com/Newsletter.

Ask Kurt a question or let us know what stories you’d like us to cover.

Follow Kurt on his social channels:

Answers to the most asked CyberGuy questions:

New from Kurt:

Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson is an award-winning tech journalist who has a deep love of technology, gear and gadgets that make life better with his contributions for Fox News & FOX Business beginning mornings on “FOX & Friends.” Got a tech question? Get Kurt’s free CyberGuy Newsletter, share your voice, a story idea or comment at CyberGuy.com.

Technology

This LG lamp is also a projector and Bluetooth speaker

Published

14 hours ago

January 3, 2025

Press Room

This LG lamp is also a projector and Bluetooth speaker

LG is coming to CES with two all-in-one “lifestyle projectors” which means they’re gong to look great when off, but not necessarily provide the best picture for the money when on. Both run on webOS with plenty of support for your favorite streaming apps.

The PF600U is three devices in one, combing a simple full HD projector with a Bluetooth speaker and standing floor lamp. It weighs 16 pounds 8 ounces (7.5kg) and features two speakers of unknown spectitude, as well as an LED lamp capable of nine colors and five brightness levels.

That image is simulated so temper your expectations for the PF600U.

Image: LG

The projector swivels on a 110-degree tilting head with an automatic screen adjustment function that should make it quick and easy to fine tune the projected image as you move the lamp around the room. Just note that it’s only capable of producing 300 ANSI lumens of brightness which means that 1920 x 1080 image won’t look very good unless viewed in blackout conditions.

I love how small the CineBeam S is because I hate giant TVs that make pretty living rooms look ugly. But this likely isn’t bright enough to replace a TV for most people.

Image: LG

The CineBeam S (model PU615U) is a remarkably small (4.3 x 6.3 x 6.3 inches / 110 x 160 x 160mm) ultra-short throw projector that can sit just inches from the wall — or better yet, an Ambient Light Rejection (ALR) screen — and still produce a giant 4K image from its laser (RGB) light source. It has integrated stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos support. And while it can produce a slightly brighter 500 ANSI lumen image, it’s still going to look washed out if it has to fight with any ambient lighting in the room.

LG isn’t announcing anything useful like pricing or release dates or countries of availability. Presumably the company wants to keep everyone on their toes when these are demonstrated publicly for the first time in Las Vegas, starting next week.