5G Truthers Bought Faraday Cages to Protect Their Routers. They're Mad They Worked.

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Let's say you hate 5G and genuinely believe it causes cancer orspreads COVID-19, despite there being no evidence to support those wild conspiracies. To shield 5G's myriad evils, then, you put your WiFi router in a metallic box that "blocks about 90 percent" of the signal. There! Now you're instantly protected from those treacherous waves of radiation!

This may sound like a made-up scenario, but 5G truthers really have bought these devices in droves. There's just one small problem with their fool-proof plan: The kinds of containers that truly do block all electromagnetic radiation are called Faraday cages, and they're not the same thing as these so-called "router guards" that look like glorified mesh file organizers. If they were real Faraday cages, none of your home WiFi signal would come through.

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There are scores of sketchy companies waiting to cash in on customers who believe in 5G-related conspiracy theories, including the brands "Router Guard" and "EMF Essentials."These scams aren't necessarily new, but the Amazon product listings have gone viral after a December 2 tweet pointed out the irony of the whole ordeal.

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So apparently putting Faraday cages around routers has become a thing for the 5g conspiracy nuts and there are companies out there ready to cash in.My sides are in orbit. pic.twitter.com/mGcud5Kb70

— 🦇Ansgar Odinson🦇 ✊🇺🇦 (@AnsgarTOdinson) December 2, 2020

In general, you should be wary of any product that promises to block harmful radiation. There are legitimate products that will do so—like an X-ray machine in medical imaging environments, or Faraday suits for situations where technicians may be working on dangerous power lines—but those products are mixed in with fraudulent tools like these router blockers.

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If you're unsure if a product will stand up to grandiose claims, you can check out the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's list of laws and regulations on radiation-emitting products to see if your device operates at a safe radiation standard.

Otherwise, common sense should suffice, and the first step is educating yourself on how this kind of technology actually works.

Fact: Not All Radiation Is Bad

RUSSELL KIGHTLEY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARYGetty Images

Virtually all of your wireless devices—from your AirPods that use Bluetooth to connect to your iPhone, to your Fitbit that connects to your smartphone—send and receive packets of data, which are broadcast through some form of electromagnetic radiation.

This is all considered non-ionizing radiation, which you can think of as relatively less energy-dense when compared with the harmful ionizing radiation that comes from the sun's ultraviolet rays, causing diseases like skin cancer; the machines that perform CT scans; or even from nuclear accidents. Non-ionizing radiation can't change your DNA, so it can't cause cancer.

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This is all rather abstract, so consider the visible spectrum, or all of the light we can see. It exists along the larger electromagnetic spectrum, but it's really just a blip. In the graphic below, you can see the visible spectrum is just between ultraviolet and infrared light, or between 400 and 700 nanometers.

CDC

As energy increases along the electromagnetic spectrum, the waves become shorter and shorter—notice that gamma rays are far more powerful, and have more densely packed waves than FM radio, for example. Frequency and wavelength, then, have an inverse relationship.

5G operates at a higher frequency than other communication standards we're used to, like 3G, 4G, or LTE. Those networks work at frequencies between about 1 to 6 gigahertz, while experts say 5G sits closer to the band between 24 and 90 gigahertz, still safely within that non-ionizing band of radiation.

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So it makes no sense to purchase a special jail-like cage for your WiFi router, since it's not emitting dangerous levels of radiation to begin with. We should also mention that to access 5G, you'll usually need a special device to connect to those higher-frequency waves. No need to worry that your old router is circulating some kind of monstrosity around your home.

Faraday Cage, Meet the Router Guard

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Right about now, Michael Faraday is rolling around in his grave.

If the man who invented the namesake technology for blocking electronic fields could read the reviews for Amazon products that promise to act like Faraday cages and shield radiation (while still letting wireless internet into your home), he'd probably just get in a cage, lock it, and throw away the key.

That's because by definition, a Faraday cage is an enclosure that distributes an electrical charge or radiation all around the exterior of the cage, protecting anything inside. Put another way, it's a hollow conductor, and the charge is on the outside surface of the cage. If the various iterations of "router guard" and "router cover" selling on Amazon for well over $60 let any internet access through, they're not Faraday cages at all.

There are some legitimate Faraday pouches and other enclosures you can purchase for your key fob or laptop to keep it protected from hackers at all times (see below), but the shady router covers fit squarely in the "do not recommend" pile.

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Key Fob Protectors

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The drama comes in when buyers realize that either:

(A) Their router guard works precisely like a real Faraday cage, blocking their wireless internet just as advertised (!)

(B) Their router guard isn't a Faraday cage at all, and literally does nothing but cost a lot of money.

Here are some of our favorite comments:

Screenshot/AmazonScreenshot/AmazonScreenshot/AmazonScreenshot/AmazonScreenshot/Amazon

Radiation Scams Abound

Sadly, this isn't the first time con artists have used radiation scare tactics to earn a quick buck by preying on some genuinely concerned (but woefully misled) customers.

In 2011, as smartphones began to rise in ubiquity, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) put out a notice on cell phone radiation scams. In it, the FTC notes that health studies have shown no conclusive relationship between cell phone radiation emissions and health problems, but scammers can take advantage of the public's fear and lack of understanding when it comes to smartphones.

From the report:

If you're looking for ways to limit your exposure to the electromagnetic emissions from your cell phone, know that, according to the FTC, there is no scientific proof that so-called shields significantly reduce exposure from these electromagnetic emissions. In fact, products that block only the earpiece – or another small portion of the phone – are totally ineffective because the entire phone emits electromagnetic waves.

Even more concerning? The FTC says smartphone radiation shields may interfere with the device's signal, causing it to "draw even more power to communicate with the base station, and possibly emit more radiation." The same could be true for the metal cages being marketed as router blockers.

Therein lies the whole irony of radiation product scams: By attempting to circumvent the low levels of electromagnetic radiation a device like a cell phone or router must emit in order to send an iMessage or connect to your favorite streaming service, a consumer could actually be making the situation worse.

Unless you work in a data center with a massive number of servers, there's no reason to even raise your eyebrows at that innocuous little router sitting in the corner of your home, mostly forgotten and probably a little bit dusty. It never did anything wrong, so you don't need to put it in jail.

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Courtney LinderSenior EditorBefore joining Pop Mech, Courtney was the technology reporter at her hometown newspaper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io