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Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion

xfinity.com

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Re: Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion

#121

Post by Yeri »

snarf21 wrote: post #47
jacobgkau wrote: post #2

> Subject to applicable law, Comcast may disclose information generated by your WiFi Motion to third parties without further notice to you in connection with any law enforcement investigation or proceeding, any dispute to which Comcast is a party, or pursuant to a court order or subpoena. Sounds like, at least in some limited circumstances (using the provided WiFi AP, having this feature turned on, etc), ISPs are goi…

Curious: What about adding a small battery powered WiFi device to your dogs collar? Would that look like a person moving around the house? What about a WiFi controlled mini drone that flew around you house? [Note: this should be illegal]

It doesn't require a WiFi device to work.

> If you’d like to prevent your pet’s movement from causing motion notifications, you can exclude pet motion in your WiFi Motion settings by turning on the Exclude Small Pets feature. > Motion is detected based on the amount of signal disruption taking place between the Xfinity Gateway and your selected WiFi-connected devices, so motion from small pets (around 40 pounds or less) can be filtered out while keeping you notified of large movements more likely to be caused by humans.

Re: Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion

#122

Post by transpute »

jl6 wrote: post #81

The race is on to find the cheapest/easiest decoy that can simulate such motion (because if everything is moving, then nothing is moving). A tube man in every corner?

The race is already on for biometric fingerprinting via WiFi Sensing, e.g. via heart rate.

Re: Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion

#123

Post by tehwebguy »

Aurornis wrote: post #62
josho wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution here shouldn't be technical; it should be legal. If we rely on the technical path, Comcast can achieve the same by how many active IPv6 addresses are in use. Even if you aren't using your phone, the device is going to be constantly pinging services like email, and your ISP can use that to piece together how many people are at home. If we rely on legal protection, then not only Comcast, but all ISPs will…

> The solution here shouldn't be technical; it should be legal. The parent commenter was highlighting that law enforcement can compel them to provide the data. The customer has to opt-in to WiFi motion sensing to have the data tracked. If you see something appear in an app, you should assume law enforcement can compel the company to provide that data. It's not really a surprise. > If we rely on legal protection, then…

> The customer has to opt-in to WiFi motion sensing to have the data tracked.

Not for long, there’s money to be made by adding this to the cops’ customer lookup portal.

Re: Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion

#124

Post by jhowison »

timewizard wrote: post #35
jacobgkau wrote: post #2

> Subject to applicable law, Comcast may disclose information generated by your WiFi Motion to third parties without further notice to you in connection with any law enforcement investigation or proceeding, any dispute to which Comcast is a party, or pursuant to a court order or subpoena. Sounds like, at least in some limited circumstances (using the provided WiFi AP, having this feature turned on, etc), ISPs are goi…

You can turn the customer AP off; however, the Comcast Customer Shared WiFi is always on. This is true even for Comcast Business accounts. You're expected to be a hotspot for their other customers. Which is one of the main reasons I bought my own modem.

You can turn off the shared hotspot: https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/disable-xfinity-wif...

Re: Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion

#125

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

hamhock666 wrote: post #115
josho wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution here shouldn't be technical; it should be legal. If we rely on the technical path, Comcast can achieve the same by how many active IPv6 addresses are in use. Even if you aren't using your phone, the device is going to be constantly pinging services like email, and your ISP can use that to piece together how many people are at home. If we rely on legal protection, then not only Comcast, but all ISPs will…

> ... I can't imagine a world where Congress could actually achieve something that widely helpful for regular citizens. The solution is to not use the internet if you care about your privacy.

We are now treating foreign students with suspicion when they don't have a satisfactory internet footprint. Only a matter of time until that gets turned against the citizenry. Submit to surveillance capitalism or go to jail you deviant.

Re: Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion

#127

Post by puppycodes »

jacobgkau wrote: post #2

> Subject to applicable law, Comcast may disclose information generated by your WiFi Motion to third parties without further notice to you in connection with any law enforcement investigation or proceeding, any dispute to which Comcast is a party, or pursuant to a court order or subpoena. Sounds like, at least in some limited circumstances (using the provided WiFi AP, having this feature turned on, etc), ISPs are goi…

definitly an atrocious violation of privacy, but in reality discerning between an animal, something blowing in the wind, and a person moving would be very hard without a dedicated calibrated array for that to hold up in court. I'm aware they have "exclude animal" but theres no way its at all accurate.

Using your mobile data and internet traffic is far easier and already deeply integrated into off the shelf law enforcement products. Those progams are even more terrifying than this by an order of magnitude.

Re: Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion

#128

Post by Saris »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #120
Saris wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can also open it up and disconnect the wifi antennas, or cut the traces if they're on the PCB.

Those vendor modems are rentals and expected to be returned in working order. Would you likely get away with it? Sure, nobody is paying techs to diagnose why the WiFi is failing for unit #367326, but cutting traces is definitely crossing some lines.

I mean if they're going to track me then it's fair game IMO.

Re: Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion

#129

Post by puppycodes »

vel0city wrote: post #112
snarf21 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious: What about adding a small battery powered WiFi device to your dogs collar? Would that look like a person moving around the house? What about a WiFi controlled mini drone that flew around you house? [Note: this should be illegal]

This technology doesn't rely on you actually having a WiFi device on you. It can detect presence/motion by changes to the standing waves of the EM propagation throughout the room. As the salty water meatbags move from room to room we change how the reflections and scattering patterns of 2.4 and 5GHz waves move. Studying these changes and some calibration, you can even determine small changes (like is the person on th…

im very skeptical of the accuracy claimed. The layout and complexity of objects in most homes to do this is way to awkward to work reliably.

For someone breathing or a heartbeat you need much higher GHz signal. Usually this is done at 30ghz to 60ghz. The power flux leaving the antenna has an inverse square drop off rate which makes this basically impractical unless your standing directly in front of it.

Re: Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion

#130

Post by casper14 »

puppycodes wrote: post #127
jacobgkau wrote: post #2

> Subject to applicable law, Comcast may disclose information generated by your WiFi Motion to third parties without further notice to you in connection with any law enforcement investigation or proceeding, any dispute to which Comcast is a party, or pursuant to a court order or subpoena. Sounds like, at least in some limited circumstances (using the provided WiFi AP, having this feature turned on, etc), ISPs are goi…

definitly an atrocious violation of privacy, but in reality discerning between an animal, something blowing in the wind, and a person moving would be very hard without a dedicated calibrated array for that to hold up in court. I'm aware they have "exclude animal" but theres no way its at all accurate. Using your mobile data and internet traffic is far easier and already deeply integrated into off the shelf law enforc…

Spot on, device tracking is much better than wifi sensing
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