On one hand, cool. On the other hand, why? This doesn't seem terribly accurate or insightful. A security camera is cheaper and has a better sensor and logic for detecting motion.
Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion
371–380 of 517 posts
Re: Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion
#372Earlier 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.
> cutting traces is definitely crossing some lines.
Pun intended I'm sure!
Re: Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion
#373Can you block this with a pihole?
Re: Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
They can map your home and motion with traffic patterns?
The OP was also talking about deducing presence based on connections and traffic patterns, which using your own WiFi AP isn't going to mitigate.
I don't think there's any reliable way around that. They can do that with real-time power meter monitoring even if you don't have an internet connection.
Re: Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It pains me every time a “well behaved” website pops up a cookie consent banner for the billionth time after I already consented because the browser wiped all the persistent user identifiers available to it. Do yourself a favor and enable the Cookie lists in uBlock Origin. I'm personally grateful that a law requires my consent before tracking me. That means I should not be tracked without me saying OK without monet…
Setting a language preference cookie is not tracking and I will die on that hill. The law requires consent before using a cookie to store even a mundane option that was just directly modified by a user. Collecting a crash report is not tracking a user. Even first party product analytics is not tracking a user. Tracking a user across domains using a 3rd party aggregator to serve add and do attribution is the evil. And…
>The law requires consent before using a cookie to store even a mundane option that was just directly modified by a user.
If your are referring to GDPR this is wrong. GDPR does not require consent for strictly necessary cookies.
>Strictly necessary cookies — These cookies are essential for you to browse the website and use its features, such as accessing secure areas of the site. Cookies that allow web shops to hold your items in your cart while you are shopping online are an example of strictly necessary cookies. These cookies will generally be first-party session cookies. While it is not required to obtain consent for these cookies, what they do and why they are necessary should be explained to the user.
Though language preference does not seem like something that requires a cookie. Just respect the Accept-Language header. There is no need to reinvent the wheel here.
Re: Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
So use a vpn.
With a VPN, your ISP may not know where packets are going, but they can still see packets moving. So, unless your VPN is injecting dummy data to mask all patterns (possible, but not common), your ISP is going to have a good idea if someone is home or not.
So does your power company with real-time meter monitoring. Masking that is much harder and would be more expensive if it's even possible.
Re: Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
We suffer from a problem that engineers want nothing to do with politics. I 1000% agree we need a digital bill of rights. It pains me every time a “well behaved” website pops up a cookie consent banner for the billionth time after I already consented because the browser wiped all the persistent user identifiers available to it. For my protection -_- I want privacy codified in human law. I didn't vote for standards bo…
> I want privacy codified in human law Article 12 No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks - Paris, 1948, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
That's a declaration, which is not binding. The ECHR art. 8 has similar contents and is binding. However, it has a 'unless we really want to'-portion:
"except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others."
Currently 'the West' happens to be doing its best to quash international law, so I'd expect even that thin veneer to crumble rather soon.
Re: Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion
#378I worked in a nascent water tech space recently involving an IOT water flow sensing device installed on a main water line. I worked extensively on detection models capable of distinguishing water fixture use during simultaneous usage scenarios. When your full time job involves a niche domain such as this, a whole new world begins to reveal itself. You can distinguish people based on their patterns of fixture usage. You can determine how many people are living in a residence. You can determine hygiene habits of each person. There's a lot more to these smart home devices than what meets the eye. You thought the sensor was good for just detecting leaks and approximately breaking down water consumption? Think again.
This device alone is capable of doing a lot, but when combined with other sensing devices such as a WIFI motion detection system, you can create a system where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. First, you may not even need to monitor water flow now because detecting a person in the bathroom, moving about, is sufficient to detect toilet usage followed by hand-wash, and shower usage. You will know duration of each. You may be able to distinguish people in a residence, which means you'll learn who did what throughout a household.
Right about now you may be wondering who would ever want to know this kind of stuff? Who cares if you just used the toilet and didn't wash your hands? Who cares if you frequently use the toilet, or wash your hands excessively, or frequently and excessively wash your hands throughout the day? What if you are a landlord with a tenant leasing agreement stipulating no one other than the listed members on the contract shall occupy the residence without permission of the landlord (with exceptions, of course).
Re: Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
You can’t solve social problems with technical solutions. Technical solutions won’t work without some kind of legal backing to force it.
>You can’t solve social problems with technical solutions.
Sure, this has a fair amount of truth to it. However, security is not a social problem, it's an economic one. No one, not even the most well funded and skilled organizations like the NSA, has access to infinite resources. Whether a given attack/data harvesting effort costs $1 million, $10 thousand, $100, $1, or $0.01 makes an enormous difference in impact. Can a given three letter agency afford to spend $1m on anyone? Sure. Can they afford it against everyone? No. Same with private orgs, if harvesting data costs $10000/person, it has to generate well over that much money in profit to make it worth it. Is that likely on average? Probably not. If it costs fractions of a cent, then they will be incentivized to scale it as hard as possible, since payoff from even one person will cover thousands of duds.
So sure, by all means we should pursue laws too, as that also shifts costs a bit. But there is zero reason not to simultaneously pursue technical means to make costs as high as possible. Both tracks matter a lot.
Re: Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion
#380I 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?
This would be cool as a cheap "is someone home" sensor for Home Assistant.