Found out my old router was leaking data for months without me knowing

I was running a scan with a free tool called Wireshark last weekend just to check my home network. Turns out my 5 year old Netgear router had a setting enabled that broadcasted my SSID and device info to anyone nearby. I found a stat online saying over 40% of home routers have default settings that expose data like that. It honestly freaked me out because I never thought to look past the basic password change. Has anyone else checked their router settings after a few years and found something sketchy?

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james_ross11d ago

Oh great, so my router was basically screaming my info into the void like some sort of digital town crier. I had one of those old Linksys routers from like 2012 that I finally replaced last year, and when I logged into the admin page for the first time in forever I found out UPnP was wide open and there was some remote management thing enabled that I definitely never turned on. Its funny how we all just plug these things in and forget they're essentially little computers running software that could have holes in it from day one.