How do you prevent hackers from hacking into your smart tech?

As an example - Robot vacuum.

The bot is connected to the WiFi constantly and connected to electricity constantly. Same for many household smart devices. 

A lot of these devices use third party apps and services. These companies may not be protected very well and may be vulnerable to cyber attacks.

If one of these companies was hacked, how much would the hackers have access to in our homes? What can we do as customers to prevent a breach of privacy?

How do you deal with this in a modern smart home?

(I live in the UK but this could be relevant anywhere in the world)

I'm in a Help Desk role and I've been helping a user who's having issues with Teams calls dropping when they're on Wi-Fi.

There are around 10 other users who have reported similar issues as well, although I've tested it on my own laptop and the connection seems completely fine. It doesn't seem to be seen as a major issue at the moment, but it does concern me a bit, especially since the issue has been assigned to me and I'm trying to figure out what's actually causing it.

When the user is at their desk connected through the dock, Teams works fine and they don't seem to have any issues. But when they're away from the dock and using Wi-Fi, their calls will randomly cut in and out or sometimes drop completely.

I was told it could be because of where they're sitting and the laptop switching between different Wi-Fi access points, causing small interruptions. But the user said they've stayed in the same spot for an entire meeting and it still happens.

So far I've tried reinstalling the Wi-Fi driver, which that actually seemed to fix it for about a week, but now the problem has come back again.

I'm not really sure where to go from here, since it's affecting multiple users but doesn't happen on my laptop, I'm wondering if there's something else I should be looking at.

Has anyone run into something similar? What else would you check?

I've put this under Networking for now because I'm not really sure where the issue sits, thanks a million.

I've been having an issue for about 2 to 3 weeks now in which, during gameplay, my computer completely freezes, randomly, for 2 to 3 minutes, including the sound, controller vibration, interior LED lighting, and on-screen movement. If I don't get frustrated and just shut it down by the power button, it will, eventually just unfreeze, executing every input I gave through the controller, keyboard and any other input device I tried at once at the moment of unfreezing. After that, it's fine for some time and then it randomly happens again...Same phenomenon. I have a PNY RTX 5060TI 16GB graphics card, an Intel I9 13th Gen processor, an ASUS Prime Z790 A Plus WIFI mother board 2 2TB SSD's, 32GB DDR5 RAM and 1000w PSU. The CPU is Liquid cooled and all the components always show within temp and power limits. I have all the drivers updated to current. Does anyone know what I might check or is anyone else having similar issues? Any help is appreciated.

My boyfriends computer is stuck after trying to update windows. It was saying driver irql and refused to go into bios or allow him to uninstall the update. It now just says it is unable to install windows. Any idea what we can do? TIA

It's an Asus I bought new about a year ago. When I turn it on I just get an error message: "Check System Power- ensure battery is at least 20%...". There's a confirm button but nothing happens when I click it. It's plugged in and the charging light is on. I've let it charge over night. I've tried unplugging it and holding the power button down for 60 seconds and then plugging it back in. I've tried getting into the BIOS but it won't let me. I've tried taking it apart and completely removing the battery. Nothing has changed. I found a replacement battery on eBay for $50 but I'm not sure that's the issue. Any ideas?

Hi,

I have a bit of an issue with my PC and need a bit of help trying to solve what the issue is. I built it around 3 years ago, and everything was working perfectly fine until 2 weeks ago it started to boot for a really long time. Sometimes is was 15 minutes, sometimes it was 7 minutes, sometimes it would just hang and not boot for an hour. When all that was happening the motherboard LED's were going CPU->DRAM->CPU all the time. If after a long wait it would boot, everything worked as normal, I did some memory and CPU stability test - all good. I did notice that it would take much longer to boot in the mornings after being off for the whole night. When I would use it, turn off and launch after 15 minutes it was launching almost at normal speed.

I've replaced the motherboard 3 days ago, and the issue was still there same as before. Today I've replaced the PSU and the issue is still there. My next suspects are CPU or RAM, but I want to gather some opinions before swapping them.

Specs:
Motherboard: Asus B650M (old) -> Aorus x870I pro ice (new)
CPU: Ryzen 7 7700
RAM: 64GB Corsair Vengeance
GPU: Asus TUF RTX 4070
PSU: BeQuiet Straight Power 650W Platinum (old) -> Seasonic GX-650W

When I started up my computer this morning there was no sound, I restarted the computer and that fixed it, but when I was playing ff14 I tried using wordpad to keep notes on something and when I tried to copy paste it to discord when I right clicked, the drop-down menu appeared but it was either blank or displaying corrupted text, trying to X out of the notepad tabs or scrolling the mouse over any button inside the wordpad corrupted the text, but the overall X button works if I click it first otherwise I needed task manager to end it

I tried restarting and that didn't fix it, Windows security didn't come up with anything either, any suggestions thoughts on how to fix this?

Edit; added pictures in comments

So I just got a PC from a friend of a friend. It's nice, runs games real well. I decided to upload my photos to archive and never lose. Realized one drive isn't local and is capped at 5gb. So naturally I go to move my photo files from one drive to a local space. Ive watched a few videos that explain it well. And ive followed everything from what I can tell. I have a folder with the photos on the PC itself, but if I go to my gallery/photos I cant see them nor can I upload them. When I try to add the folder of pictures I can see the folder but it has nothing in it through the photos app but when its being viewed within the files app the photos are there. How do I just simply have my photos uploaded to my gallery without one drive? This is so confusing!!

In need to RMA my i9-14900k and I was thinking of upgrading to a 285K.

Those the 285K will perform better or equivalent? or is better just get another i9-14900k?

I have a Zenbook A16 I recently got and it seems to really dislike any sort of mice. I had a wired mouse I used with my previous laptop but it didn't work with this one for some reason. I didn't look that deep into it, and I wanted to switch to a wireless one anyway, so I just bought a different one. It worked fine for a little while, but now whenever I put it into the USB port it says it doesn't recognize the device. I'd tried updating and uninstalling drivers multiple times, and It works for a bit and then stops with the same "USB device not recognized" prompt. It only has one port so I can't just switch them. It doesn't seem to happen with my microphone thankfully, though that only made things more confusing to me and no search result gives me a concrete solution. Is there something I'm missing? Or should I take it in for repairs? Would appreciate any advice.

When the device is in charge it doesn't run out of charge, but the level of charge can't increase. I checked the windows update but it keeps persisting

Hello,

Exactly 1 week ago I installed tool, mod for World of Warcraft 3.3.5. Day after my PC throw automatically to Allowed Threats these viruses:

PUA:Win32/InstallCore

HackTool:Win32/AutoKMS

Trojan:Win32/Ludicrouz.Z

Hack Tool:MSIL/TunMirror

Trojan:Win32/Conteban.B!ml

Behavior:Win32/Execution.IF!ml

Trojan:Win32/DefenseEvasion!rfn

Hack Tool:MSIL/AutoKMS.I!MTB

Hack Tool:Win64/ProductKey.G!MSR

Trojan:Win32/Rozena.ALRIMTB

I later clean installed PC once, plugged my 2TB external disk drive, viruses appaered again so I did second clean install and my issue was fixed - I thought. Meanwhile I got message from other random player I that they know I couldnt launch game (maybe it wasnt related to virus but I got scared and thought it was). Problem was much larger than that but that's the generic recap from it.

Today, out of nowhere I got new problem. Please help me, I again don't know what to do.

I was watching Youtube and I got random Windows notification that my Windows Defender update isn't up to date, that I have old version and that I can click that notification to check which version is the newest and update it. I clicked it and I got this weird message. I'm sending photo of it, I'm sorry its in polish, but it says:

"Page not available

Your IT administrator has limited access to some areas of this app, and the item you tried to access is not available. Contact your IT help desk for more information."

I don't have any IT administrator for my PC, network, router and all devices within my network. Does it mean someone has access of my PC, am I still hacked despite the clean installs of my PC?

But to continue, once this message showed up I decided to turn off my PC and restart router. I did that and then I decided to turn on my laptop. Just when I turned it on and logged in, I noticed like 5 or so cmd windows oppening immadiately and disappearing for 0.5s.

I did Full Scan in Windows Defender, offline scan and I checked my Windows Defender update, scanned laptop with Malwarebytes and I found 0 detections. What should I do? Im afraid that my entire router, network and my parents devices are hacked now. Im afraid my parents important accounts like bank email and so on are hacked. They didnt log on this PC but they are plugged to same network with their PCs and phones. Should I restart my router and contact my internet provider that Im hacked? Sorry for so many questions, but Im genuinely scared and I don't know what to do.

Hello, for several months now, I’ve been having an issue with my desktop PC.

It has been shutting down and restarting in an endless loop with increasing frequency. The screen goes black, and the fans speed up and slow down repeatedly, all without ever displaying anything.

This can happen at any time: while gaming, in a game’s main menu, or—more rarely—even while on the desktop.

Sometimes it happens after 2–3 hours of gameplay, other times after just 20 minutes; and once it restarts, I can be certain that I won’t get more than an hour of playtime in the same game.

I have taken several steps to address this:

I replaced the CPU cooler to manage temperatures, and I play with the PC case open.

I reset the BIOS.

I updated the BIOS.

I capped the in-game FPS.

I cleaned the dust out of the PC.

I replaced the power supply unit (PSU).

I have the PC plugged directly into a wall outlet.

I ran OCCT stress tests on the CPU, GPU, RAM, and VRAM—everything checked out fine.

I throttled the GPU by 6%.

Nothing has worked.

The only thing that made a difference for one game (an Early Access title that would consistently crash my PC) was disabling FSR and other settings that utilize AI.

The two games I’m currently playing are *The Witcher* (which received a major update in September) and *Hunt: Showdown* (which causes the PC to crash more and more frequently—I had no issues with it just 4–6 months ago).

My system configuration:

AMD Ryzen 7 5800X

AMD Radeon RX 6800XT

X570 AORUS ELITE

16GB DDR4

Corsair RM750x

The only thing I haven’t done yet is disassemble the entire system to check each individual component. I’m increasingly suspicious of the motherboard.

Do you have a solution?

In this machine I shared account with someone else, and I really wanna change my setup and stuff according to this setup of Frutigar Aero tutorial over here
https://youtu.be/dUP78nXjjkw?si=fRGEr0MMDe3ti7It

So like would doing this affect another account? because I didn't want to disturb the other person.

Wsp guys i need help plss, i was browsing a sketchy site for FL Studio plugins and out of nowhere (either random or a misclick), a browser download triggered and opened a Windows "Save As" file explorer window for a .exe file called "setup". I immediately hit Cancel. My Downloads folder is totally clean, Windows Defender quick scan found 0 threats and Task Manager is idling normally I know logically nothing downloads or runs if you cancel, but my brain is being paranoid. Is there any way a hidden payload bypassed that dialog, or am I totally fine since I cancelled it right away? Thanks!

I noticed this issue first the other morning.

I play games most every evening and i always shut off the pc before going to sleep. I did this in the usual order monday night and in the morning i noticed the pc was on.

As per usual when its left alone for a little while my monitors has gone in standby-mode, so i wiggled the mouse but no screen would start. Tried turning the monitors off/on but nothing worked, it only said ”No signal detected, enterong stand-by mode in 3, 2, 1” and went black again.

As i couldnt wake the screen or anything i resorted to press and hold the power-button to turn it off the hard way. Then started it and everything worked as normal, until i was going to bed and turned it off again. It shut of the monitors but didnt turn off the pc. I emptied my stomach and returned 30min later only to see it still being on, fans spinning and rgb-lights shining as usual.

What is the problem? I dont want to have to turn my PC off with the power-button for all eternity since ive heard this could be hurtful for the computer.

Hi everyone,

I’m having a problem with my laptop and I’m hoping someone here might know what’s going on.

My laptop had some issues recently, so I formatted it and reinstalled Windows. Everything worked normally at first, but then I noticed that whenever I moved the laptop, it would suddenly shut down because the hard drive wasn’t properly secured in place.

Now I’m having another problem with the internet. The laptop connects to Wi-Fi, but it always says “No internet, secured”, and I can’t access the internet at all.

I’ve already tried pretty much every solution I could find on YouTube, but nothing has worked.

Has anyone experienced something similar or knows what might be causing this?

I get this error message when I try to open an .exe I had on the drive before:

"Windows cannot find 'E:\<file name>'. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again."

This is windows 11 pro for workstations 26H2. The file system is ReFS.

Any new files I put on the storage space disk are fine.

I looked in backblaze, and the e: drive showed up twice, one of them was "unplugged"

Windows keeps updating automatically and overwrites my gpu drivers with their generic drivers causing my pc to instantly lock up and crash. After restarting only 1 of 3 monitors is on amd adrenaline has now uninstalled itself and windows has replaced my drivers with their generic ones. Issue only started with recent windows update. Any help would be much appreciated!

I have a Samsung Galaxy s23. I just got my son an iPad, which has cellular capabilities but for now he is just using iMessages with an attached iCloud email account. I have never used Apple products before so I apologize for my ignorance, but is there a way to text him from my phone? I can't figure out how to get our messages through the way it seems to just look like a regular text on my sister's iPhone. Is that only possible if I pay for cell service for his iPad (I would rather not)? The answers on google have not been helpful. Thank you in advance!

Afternoon,

I have municipal fiber offered in my community. I've been a customer for approximately 8 years and five in my current residence. When they installed the fiber they had two lines coming into the home, both of these lines go into a small 2.5x2.5 in white splitter. This splitter has two ports at the base for cat5/cat6 cable. One of which runs to the installed ENT which receives power from in nearby wall outlet. The ENT then has cat cable running to my router/modem inside the home.

The small white splitter, had an extra Port that was unused. My PC is located only about 6 ft away from this setup. I hardwired cat5/cat6 cable to my PC from the splitter and have had a hardwire connection for over a year without any issue. Recently, the fiber in our community had a small issue that was resolved relatively quickly. I spoke with tech support who explained that it was a hardware issue on their end and that the entire community experienced A small interruption in service.

Since this interruption in service, however, the hardwire line from the splitter no longer works to provide internet access to the PC. I since switched to a backup Wi-Fi connection, however, the distance to the router is substantial and nowhere near as fast as it was when I was hardwired.

Long story short, I spoke with tech support today who stated I should have never had a cat5/cat6 cable coming from the splitter directly into my PC. This was not how it was meant to work and although they cannot explain why it's not working anymore, they simply rested on the idea that I should not be using it.

Why should it not be used in this configuration? Does this cause an issue with the internet service provider? Also, why may it have stopped working suddenly? (There was no physical change or issue at my specific address.) Is it common for to fiber lines to be run in the house as redundancies?

Any insights would be very helpful!

So I used some shady sites to watch sports on and I instantly got a Windows Defender "Threat Found" popup. I'm not tstupid I know using these shady sites are full of scams and ads but I have all ads and pop ups blocked, use a VPN, and have used them before but recently have been getting these kind of popups. I'd normally just put them down to a fake popup but the fact that they are actual Windows Defender popups from Windows is making me second guess but I have done several full scans and not found anything and then as soon as I open these sites again I get the popup. I wondered if anyone knows if these are some kind of advanced scam.

كروم او اي متصفح افتراضي بيقعد اول ما افتح الجهاز يفتح كل شويه و كل شويه اقفله و يفتح و لو فتحته و فتحت اي صفحه يفتح بس علي ال home page و يرندر اكتر من 50 مره

كل ما افتح الجهاز لازم يرندر كده حاولت في كل الطرق و مش عارف الحل و المشكله انه مش بيفتح موقع هو بس بيفتح ال home page بس

A few months back I upgraded my son’s motherboard and cpu, but since then he keeps getting a ‘secure boot’ error when trying to play Valorant, and more recently COD too.
I have tried so many steps to enable SB but each time I do I get an SB violation.
A couple of people have told me I need to completely format my ssd and remove all partitions.
I’m not a complete novice but I haven’t done this before, I’m sure it’s not as easy as it sounds and with a few more steps I’m sure.
I would really appreciate any suggestions and advice please.