Hi again
I finally figured 'Ned' out. This summer I visited a friend called Nedra. I used her modem with my laptop to access the internet. I think somehow her nicknme , Ned, was placed in my profile. Does tht make sense to you?
Btw, thank you for the kind words but I received a lot of support before the goal was achieved.

Hi, yes that makes perfect sense, so at least you now know that was a genuine entry, and therefore nothing to worry about, but as you progress these things that seem overwhelming to you now, will eventually seem easy and you will wonder why you were so worried lol, it's all about building from the bottom up, and your well on your way now, keep it up.

I received a note from a "hard to reach" Netgear tech who said it is not unusual to see other names in the profile as wireless can pick up names near you. What do you think of that?

I have a passphrase of many characters so that is ok.
But I wondered if most people have a password for 192.168.1.1 admin , password.
I ask bc I was working on the router and can see the passphrase. If someone typed 192.168 etc in my pc they could see it also. This is at the desdktop; from the laptop it is only stars.
Is this overdoing it or sound practice?

Do you have a pinhole to reset to factory settings? I am looking my router over and do not see that but have read it exists.
Am I keeping you awake?

Yes it is very normal to see several connection names when searching to connect to a device, and if your in a close neighbourhood with people who can set up a router you can often figure out who's connections your seeing, the thing to notice about these connections is if they have a padlock symbol or not, if they do they are encrypted connections, and must have the correct pass to access the service, if they don't then it is an insecure connection and ANYONE can access the service if they are in range.

Now inputting the ip address to access the settings again is fairly universal, and this is why it's so important for you to change the default pass on the router, because admin\password are a common default, so basically if you don't change these details anyone can guess and get into the settings, and once in they can change what they want, BUT, by changing the default no one can log into the settings, they can certainly enter the ip address, they can access the user name\password login screen easily as normal, but without the correct details entered they can get no further, and then they can't see or change anything.

As to the pinhole, yes it certainly should have one, it should be on the rear, possibly near the power connection, but when they say pinhole, thats exactly what they mean, so you have to look closely for a small circle, like a dot almost, but when you look closer you will see a hole, this is where you insert a small pin or maybe Biro tip (if your lucky it may fit), then with the router unplugged insert and hold the pin for maybe 30 seconds ish, then the router will be reset to the defaults again.

Hopefully this tells you what you wanted to know, but your not keeping me awake lol, no rest for the wicked as they say lol.

I will enter a new password instead of the default "password". I think 'admin' stays as is, correct? I see no provision to change anything but the password.
For the sake of learning, isn't it true that someone would have to be at my machine in order to make use of the 'admin' and default 'password'? In other words, someone on line could not access my pc and type 192.etc. to see my machine?

The way to set factory settings with mine is to go to 'backup' and there is a button to click which resets the router.

I wonder if backing up the settings is carrying things too far or a good idea. Any opinion?

I am assuming you are interested in the exchanges if I am wrong please indicate your preference to me.

TBH if nothing more doing this makes my brain work, as painful as that is lol, but no it's fine, it helps me as much as you, because I am human, and can get things wrong, or miss things, but even if all is well it still makes me think about things deeper than usual at times, so I can always learn something at the same time, so it's all good.

But you can change the name as well if it will allow, there may be some that wont allow for all I know, but as long as it allows you can change it if you want, if it wont allow this then thats fine just leave it as is, but change the pass at a minimum, but for a person to access your router settings would need to be directly connected to the physical router as best I'm aware, as to backing up settings, TBH have never even thought about it, I guess there is nothing wrong in doing so, it certainly can't hurt, but if you would ever need it is another issue, but as usual if you wait until you do need something then it's usually too late, so probably worth doing for peace of mind again.

Well, the password to access the router is set as well as the passphrase to protect it.
I did utilize hte backup/restore feature which is ez and handy.
My Netgear has an option thru the pc to reset to factory settings instead of the pin hole some have to press.
Looking back, it was not all that hard, but everything is ez once you learn how to do it.
Well, I am off to see what other concept I can learn how to do.
Thanx a lot.

NP, I did say that once through it you would look back and wonder why you worried lol, but we have all been there so just keep plodding on and you'll be fine.