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Caloroga Shark Media. This is Paranormal Aliens, Episode four. Why
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are your router lights blinking so fast? Who else is
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using your Internet?
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You can call me James, and I want you to
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do something right now. Stop what you're doing and go
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look at your Internet router. Look at those little led lights.
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See how they're blinking, how fast they're flashing. Now ask yourself,
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what exactly is your router doing right now? You're not
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downloading a movie, You're not video calling any one, You're
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just listening to a podcast. So why is that data
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light flickering like a strobe at a rave? Because someone
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else is using your Internet connection and they don't need
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your permission. I spent fifteen years designing network security systems
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for companies that make the routers sitting in your living room,
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and what I'm about to tell you will make you
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want to unplug every connected device in your house and
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throw them in the garbage. Your router isn't just connecting
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you to the Internet. It's connecting the Internet to everything
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in your house. Every smart TV, every Alexa, every ring doorbell,
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every smart appliance you've bought in the last five years.
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They're all talking constantly. Sending data streams you never authorized
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to servers you've never heard of. But it's worse than that,
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much worse. Your Internet service provider, your cable company, your
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phone company, whoever you're paying every month. They've been quietly
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turning your router into a public Wi Fi hotspot, without
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telling you, without asking permission, and definitely without reducing your bill.
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It's called hotspot sharing, and it's buried in the terms
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of service you never read. They're using a portion of
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your bandwidth to provide Internet access to anyone within range
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of your router. Strangers can connect to your internet using
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your electricity, slowing down your connection, and you're paying for
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the privilege. My source at that cable company whose trucks
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you see in every neighborhood tells me this isn't about
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customer convenience. It's about surveillance. Every device that can to
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these shared hotspots gets logged, tracked, and profiled. They know
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where you go, when you leave, who visits your house,
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and how long they stay. But let's talk about what's
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really happening to those blinking lights, Because there's traffic on
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your network that has nothing to do with hotspots sharing.
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Traffic that's specifically designed to be invisible to you. Every
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modern router has something called remote management enabled by default,
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your ISP can access your router anytime they want change settings,
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update firmware, monitor traffic patterns. They call it customer support.
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I call it backdoor access to every device in your home.
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And here's the kicker, they're not the only ones with access.
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My contact at that telecommunications equipment manufacturer you've definitely heard
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of tells me that every device shipped in the last
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decade has multiple access points built into the firmware, not
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just for your ISP, for law enforcement, for intelligence agencies,
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for authorized third parties that are never specifically identified. Your
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router is legally required to allow government access under the
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Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, but the access they've
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built goes way beyond what's legally required. They can see
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everything every website you visit, every file you download, every
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device you connect, every conversation you have over Wi Fi calling,
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and those firmware updates that happen automatically in the middle
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of the night. You think they're just security patches and
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bug fixes, But my source inside that government agency you
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think a TV show made up tells me some of
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those updates are installing new monitoring capabilities, new data collection algorithms,
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new ways to analyze your digital behavior and predict your
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future actions. But wait, there's more. Because it's not just
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your ISP and the government accessing your router. There's something
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called the Internet of Things botnet, and your router is
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probably part of it, whether you know it or not.
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Hackers figured out years ago that home routers are the
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weakest link in Internet security. Most people never change the
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default passwords, most people never update the firmware manually. Most
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people don't even know what firmware is, so these devices
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get compromised by the millions and turned into zombie networks.
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Your router could be sending spam emails right now. It
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could be participating in cryptocurrency mining operations. It could be
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part of a distributed denial of service attack against infrastructure
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you've never heard of, and you'd never know, because this
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traffic is designed to use just a tiny fraction of
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your bandwidth, not enough to slow down your Netflix, but
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enough to generate massive collective computing power when multiplied across
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millions of infected devices. My source at that cybersecurity company
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that protects half the fortune five hundred tells me. They've
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identified botnets with more computing power than most government supercomputers,
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networks of compromised home routers that can crack encryption, mine cryptocurrency,
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or launch coordinated attacks against any target on the Internet.
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And the beautiful part from the attacker's perspective is that
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homeowners are completely unaware their devices are being used. The
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attacks happen during off peak hours, when you're asleep or
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at work. They used protocol and ports you've never heard of,
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and they're designed to look like normal background Internet traffic.
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But here's where it gets really paranoid. What if some
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of those botnets aren't run by criminals. What if they're
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run by intelligence agencies that need massive distributed computing networks
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for surveillance and code breaking operations. Think about it. Why
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build expensive government data centers when you can hijack millions
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of home ruters for free. Why develop your own supercomputers
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when you can borrow processing power from every household in America.
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We'll be right back now. Let's talk about what those
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smart devices in your house are really doing. Because every
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time you ask your smart speaker a question or tell
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your voice assistant to turn on the lights, you're not
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just talking to your device. You're talking to servers owned
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by companies that have more data about you than your
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spouse does. But it's not just the conversations they're recording.
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It's everything, every click, every pause, every time you pick
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up your phone. Smart TVs are watching what you watch,
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when you watch it, how long you watch it, and
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what you do during commercial breaks. Smart thermostats know when
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you're home, when you're asleep, when you're on vacation. Smart
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doorbells know who visits you, when they arrive, how long
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they stay. All of this data flows through your router,
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and all of it gets stored permanently on servers you'll
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never see, owned by companies that have agreements with government agencies.
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You'll never know about my contact at that search engine
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company that knows everything about everyone tells me they've built
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psychological profiles on every user that are more accurate than
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clinical assessments. They know if you're depressed before you do.
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They know if you're planning to leave your job, break
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up with your partner, or buy a house before you've
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consciously made those decisions. How Because your digital behavior patterns
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are incredibly predictable. The websites you visit the time you
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spend on each page, the searches you make, the videos
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you watch. It all adds up to a complete picture
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of your mental state, your intentions, your vulnerabilities. And it's
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not just for advertising. That data is being used to
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predict and influence your behavior, to nudge you towards certain decisions,
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to suppress information that might change your mind about important issues,
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to keep you consuming, clicking, and staying distracted. But here's
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the most insidious part. They're using your own router to
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spy on your offline behavior too. Modern routers can detect
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how many devices are in your house, where they are,
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how they move around. They can tell if you're alone
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or with someone. They can detect unusual movement patterns that
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might indicate illness, depression, or other changes in behavior. Wi
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Fi signals bounce off your body differently than they bounce
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off furniture. Advanced algorithms can analyze these signal variations to
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determine how many people are in a room where they're sitting,
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even their approximate size and movement patterns. Your router is
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essentially a low resolution radar system that's constantly scanning your
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living space, and all of this data your online activity,
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your offline movement patterns, device usage, your sleep schedule, your
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social interactions. It's all being correlated and analyzed to build
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a real time model of your life that's more comprehensive
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than anything that's ever existed in human history. They know
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you better than you know yourself. They can predict your
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behavior better than your family can, and they're using this
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knowledge to manipulate your decisions in ways you're not even
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aware of. The Next time you wonder why you suddenly
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felt like ordering takeout, or why you decided to buy
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something you didn't really need, or why you clicked on
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a particular article or video, ask yourself, was that really
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your decision or was it the result of algorithmic manipulation
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based on comprehensive surveillance data collected through the blinking lights
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on your router. Because those lights aren't just indicating network activity,
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they're indicating the real time transfer of your private life
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to corporate and government databases that will never delete what
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they know about you. And the scariest part, this is
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just the beginning. With five G networks and satellite internet
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and the Internet of Things expanding into every aspect of
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daily life, the amount of surveillance data flowing through your
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router is going to increase exponentially. Soon, they won't just
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know what you're doing online. They'll know everything you're doing,
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everywhere you go, everyone you talk to, everything you think about,
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and it'll all be flowing through that little box in
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your living room with the blinking lights. So the next
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time you look at your router, remember those lights aren't
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just showing your Internet activity. They're showing your life being uploaded, analyzed,
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and stored forever by people who know you better than
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you know yourself. My lawyers, my safety and my NDA
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compel me to tell you this is all parody. None
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of this is real, right, stay paranoid,