Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2023 January 24

Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

January 24

Wireless network.

My Dad had a wireless network that was password protected, set up by family. Then the tenants moved out, new tenants moved in. Years later, they were somehow able to shut it down for a week, and then when it came back up, the network name changed, and there was no password required. Then people were able to get into my Dad's bank accounts info, is this stuff correlated? Or would it not be connected? Granted anyone nearby can use our free wi-fi, but that does that make them able to hack in and retrieve information? 67.165.185.178 (talk) 01:00, 24 January 2023 (UTC).

Unsecured Wifi networks are vulnerable to the problems you note, see [1]. If your father's computer was logged into an unsecured network, even one in his own home, other people accessing that network could possibly have gotten the information you mention. HOWEVER, that being said, there are a lot of ways for bank information to be stolen, and given the post hoc ergo propter hoc problem with assuming that the unsecured home Wifi caused the identity theft, it is far more likely that the information was taken in some other way. Again, possible but not likely the two events are related. --Jayron32 13:31, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Still, it's always better to secure your Wi-Fi, even with a simple, basic password that you will give out when asked, but not accessible offhand to anyone who would just happen to be there. --Ouro (blah blah) 05:20, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Use 'hidden' glyphs in Microsoft Word

Hi, a font I use has some decorative characters in it (graphics of leaves etc) which aren't showing in 'Insert>Symbol' in Word, nor in Character Map, but they are definitely there because when I upload the OTF file to FontCloud they show up. Does anyone know how I can get them into Word? Thanks Amisom (talk) 11:57, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Here's a page about inserting characters in Adobe InDesign. I offer it because of the part which says "Sometimes a glyph can only be inserted by its GID value in a specific font." GID, I think, stands for Glyph ID, and is specific to the font: a glyph need not have any other name or number. So apparently you can access glyphs this way in Indesign, but not in Word as far as I can tell. I found this site fontdrop which might give useful information: besides displaying all the glyphs, it has a "data" tab which shows associated tables. There's some potential in editing these tables using fonttools in order to map the hidden glyphs to characters or codepoints so that you can access them in Word.  Card Zero  (talk) 20:18, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Word is extremely erratic at this kind of thing. You may be able to copy the characters from other files or possibly they may be encoded using OpenType stylistic sets. Try using Wakamai Fondue, it's a great tool for seeing how mystery glyphs are encoded. Blythwood (talk) 02:11, 25 January 2023 (UTC)