These Scammy 5G router cages roll Michael Faraday in his grave

While products that promise to protect you from radiation are far from new, Faraday router cages that claim to block harmful electromagnetic field radiation (as well as the 5G signal) are proliferating on Amazon.

In one Tweeter Yesterday user @AnsgarTOdinson posted screenshots from Amazon of a “Faraday Defense Router Shield // Wi-Fi Guard, WiFi Router Cover, EMF Guard, Superior Shielding Performance, Block up to 95% d ‘EMF RF waves, Quality Build, Made in the USA. ”Screenshots of user reviews were included, in which buyers were dismayed to find that the cage had indeed jammed their wifi signals.

A quick search for “Faraday router shields 5G” on Amazon, unfortunately, yields 159 results. While most claim to block between 90-95% of ordinary EMF radiation, a handful of products also claim that they block 5G while also allowing you to use wifi. Granted, some of these lists are hilarious. Several include photoshopped bows because, you know, it’s the season. Others have incredibly specific product titles that clearly tell a beef story between a fraudulent brand and another counterfeit company trying to nursery into their territory. But either way, those glorified mesh bins cost anywhere from $ 50 to $ 150.

If you don’t know a Faraday cage, it is a metal cage that transforms electrostatic charges or types of EMFs and distributes them through the cage itself, thus protecting the interior. This same principle explains why buildings sometimes disrupt wifi or cellular signals. In everyday life, your car, microwave oven, and MRI scanners also act as Faraday cages. TL; DR: Faraday’s cages are meant to help people, not to be used as bogus marketing to profit from baseless conspiracy theories.

There are concerns that 5G may affect your health due to the higher frequency millimeter wave signals that are part of 5G networks. But there is no evidence that 5G is dangerous for your health. The New York Times has reported that your skin provides an adequate barrier against high frequency radio waves, including 5G. But even if 5G was dangerous – which, again, there is no evidence – these products are stupid because Cellular 5G does not come from your wifi router. In addition, any router shield that lets out all signal is not an appropriate Faraday cage.

While I’m not a psychic, I’m pretty sure Michael Faraday, the scientist whose Faraday cages are named, had no intention of his invention being abused in this way. Besieged tech journalists and 5G experts around the world sit with their heads between their knees, pinching the bridge of their noses.

“A lot of people seem to think their home router is 4G or 5G,” Sascha Segan, senior mobile analyst at PC Magazine, told Gizmodo. “They’re wrong. Home wifi routers usually don’t emit a cellular signal. Maybe they’re confused about the naming of 5 GHz wifi? Anyway, if people want to put trash on their routers. to make them useless, uh, less power for them.

“It appears to be a convergence of technical ignorance and conspiracy theories,” said Avi Greengart, president and senior analyst at Techsponential. “5 GHz wifi is not the same as cellular 5G. Putting a router in a Faraday cage – assuming it is an efficient Faraday cage – prevents your router from functioning properly. It doesn’t protect you from anything, and even if it did, it would be much more efficient to disable bands in the router settings, or just unplug it.

“It’s a box to block your wifi,” Segan said. “It will work in exact proportion to the degradation of your wifi. There is no ‘EMF’ magic wave to block what is not the wifi you are trying to use. If you’re concerned about wireless signals, get a switch and use Ethernet. “

“When it comes to these devices, they’re preying on people who are afraid of wireless communications and the radiation they emit,” Anshel Sag, senior analyst for 5G at Moor Insights & Strategy, told Gizmodo in a report. E-mail. “I have been following the industry that attacks people’s fear of 5G and most of these products either don’t work at all or work very well and make wireless communications unnecessary. In either case, the consumer is not well informed about the technology and is exploited based on their fears. I would never advise anyone to buy one of these devices. “

Gizmodo reached out to Smart Meter Guard, which sells at least three of these devices on Amazon and their website, to explain why they have chosen to market their product in this way. We also reached out to Amazon to ask why such fraudulent products were allowed on their site. In each case, Gizmodo did not get an immediate response.

This isn’t the first time shady companies have used bogus anti-5G products to profit. A particularly glaring example is the anti-5G USB stick, which claimed to emit a holographic bubble that protected 5G usersgeyman. It was, of course, ruthlessly demystified in a teardown as being nothing more than a $ 300 sticker. Yet these types of fraudulent products abound on Amazon. Not only can you find 5G brief, you may also find questionable 5G maternity bands to “protect” your unborn child and EMF protection pendants which claim to be programmed with “over 30 homeopathic frequencies”.

Ultimately, this is a buyer’s case. Shame on Amazon, however, that by allowing these modern day snake oil sellers on its platform, it is also directly profiting from unwanted science. AGranted, it would be a Herculean effort to sift through the quadrillion listings on Amazon and eliminate every bogus item. But at the very least, for the sake of the sanity of an entire industry, Get rid of fake wifi trash cans. Only then can Michael Faraday’s spirit rest in peace.

We reached out to Amazon for comment. The company said it was reviewing the listings.