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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

#181

Post by zzo38computer »

landl0rd wrote: post #61
aspenmayer wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With enough signals, gait recognition for example is possible, and those same signals could be corroborated with presence or absence of concomitant device signals to determine if your device is moving with your person, and if not, to then flag this for enhanced monitoring if evasion is suspected.

The point is every single thing I own should be "on my side". My car should not store my location history. My wifi router should not track presence and movement. My printer should not add any watermarks or telltale dots. My stuff should actively make it difficult or impossible for hackers, advertisers, or law enforcement to recover any useful information. This means, respectively: ensure personal info is stored secur…

I agree, but that is only one reason. The other reason is to save power (and also RAM, disk space, network bandwidth, time, etc) by omitting unwanted functions. (Some things to actively make it difficult (e.g. encryption, passwords) would use up more power, but since they are not constantly active and are not as many functions, they might still use up less power in total.)

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

#182

Post by al_borland »

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…

“Comcast does not monitor the motion and/or notifications generated by the service.”

Sounds like the above claim amounts to nothing more than, “trust me bro.” Or, rather, that that nothing stops them from monitoring it, other than the cost, as they haven’t monetized it yet.

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

#183

Post by taneq »

al_borland wrote: post #182
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…

“Comcast does not monitor the motion and/or notifications generated by the service.” Sounds like the above claim amounts to nothing more than, “trust me bro.” Or, rather, that that nothing stops them from monitoring it, other than the cost, as they haven’t monetized it yet.

Or someone else monitors them?

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

#184

Post by jvanderbot »

josho wrote: post #29
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…

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…

In the future when you say things like this, please say "First" or else you're starting an endless back-and-forth of one-ups and false dichotomies.

A legal precedent easily leads to a technical block.

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

#185

Post by lovich »

armchairhacker wrote: post #103
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. I disagree. Solutions should be technical whenever possible, because in practice, laws tend to be abused and/or not enforced. Laws also need resources and cooperation to be enforced, and some laws are hard to enforce without creating backdoors or compromising other rights. "ISPs will be prohibited from spying on their customers" doesn't mean ISPs won't s…

Technical and legal solutions are for different classes of problems.

Encryption is a technical solution trying to solve the problem of people being able to steal your data/money without your knowledge.

The law/police are the solution to the 5 dollar wrench problem, where you are very aware of the attack but unable to physically stop it

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

#186

Post by al_borland »

zeta0134 wrote: post #109
femiagbabiaka wrote: post #15

Xfinity won't give folks in certain locales (maybe everywhere in the US?) unlimited bandwidth unless they use their modem/router. This seems like a good reason that practice should be illegal.

This practice, and fear of the exact sort of nonsense in this article, plus wanting to keep my wifi bandwidth free for the network I actually connect to, is why I'm still on AT&T DSL in my area, at 50 mbps. Comcast is available at up to gigabit, and they can keep it.

I had AT&T DSL many years ago. They forced me to use their modem/router combo from 2Wire. It was truly awful. I eventually got so fed up with trying to connect things to the WiFi that I bought a separate router to plug into it, and connected to that network, which it did let me do. That solved most of my problems, other than the overall poor service.

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

#187

Post by Banditoz »

amazingman wrote: post #91

Put your cable modem in bridge mode and use your own WiFi. I used to recommend using your own cable modem as well, but these days you have to use the Xfinity modem to avoid overages if you're in a market with data caps. Comcast has a stellar network operations unit, but their business operations are creepy and exploitative.

Is their network good, though? They try to keep my data in their network as long as possible affecting latency to certain places, which is significantly worse than what fiber providers in my area do.

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

#188

Post by Terr_ »

cs702 wrote: post #150

If you ask the Xfinity managers who came up with this idea whether thieves will be able to buy live information on whether your home is empty from hackers on the dark web, the managers will likely say... nothing. What they will do is look at you with a deer-in-the-headlights expression in their shocked faces. Sigh.

The word "liability" might not always work, but occasionally it makes someone think a little harder about what their company is doing.

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

#189

Post by ab71e5 »

sneak wrote: post #82
EvanAnderson wrote: post #10

I don't want my ISP doing this to me, but it sounds like something pretty cool to do myself. Does anybody know what the current state of "self-hosting" this kind of functionality is?

Just get cameras and local storage/processing for them. No need for elaborate Wi-Fi presence detection hacks.

This is hacker news, of course there is a need

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

#190

Post by al_borland »

transpute wrote: post #31

Sensing is (sadly) part of Wi-Fi 7. If you have a recent Intel, AMD or Qualcomm device from the past few years, it's likely physically capable of detecting human presence and/or activity (e.g. breathing rate). It can also be done with $20 ESP32 devices + OSS firmware and _possibly_ with compromised radio basebands.

Was anyone asking for their network to be able to sense their breathing rate? What does this enable that actually improves people’s lives?

This is the kind of stuff that pushes me to pull a Ron Swanson and throw my technology in the dumpster.

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