New Xfinity router motion-detecting feature stokes privacy fears — feature powered by Wi-Fi signals

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www.tomshardware.com/networking/routers/new-xfi…

When I'm in a scummy corporate competition and my opponent is Comcast.

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Use your own modem and router so your ISP doesn't have access to it.

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With Att fiber, I had to use their gateway or not have internet. You can set it to passthrough mode but I didn't really trust that even with my own router and their wifi disabled.

On Comcast/xfinity copper 2.5, I am 100% using my own modem and router. They kept pushing me to get a streaming box, thermostat, camera, whatever the fuck else and it took several steps to get just the basic service.

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At face value, this sounds convenient, and it would have been fine and dandy if Xfinity hadn't pulled the classic fine print shenanigans. Buried deep within the terms of service, the company has a clause stating that once you enable this feature, you give the company the right to collect and log your data, which can subsequently be sold to advertisers.

But that's not even the scary part. According to Comcast's policy, these logs can be shared in legal disputes or with law enforcement under subpoena, without requiring additional consent. While it’s not tracking you with a camera, it’s still observing patterns: when you’re home, when you’re not, and how often there’s movement in different rooms. This data is exclusively attached to your account, so any alibis are out of the question.

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Xfinity claims it can distinguish between a pet and a person, and you can customize the system's sensitivity or the frequency of notifications.

Is this bullshit? I'm not completely sure but it sure sounds like bullshit. It sounds like they're in the end stage of enshittification where they start lying to even the people who they're betraying everyone else on behalf of, and claiming to be able to harvest and monetize data that has only the dimmest glimmer of accuracy to it.

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Probably not entirely bullshit. There are research to collaborate this:
- https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/security/a42575068/scientists-use-wifi-to-see-through-walls/
- https://www.vice.com/en/article/scientists-are-getting-eerily-good-at-using-wifi-to-see-people-through-walls-in-detail/
- https://www.tomshardware.com/news/wi-fi-routers-used-to-detect-human-locations-poses-within-a-room

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I'm still just skeptical. There's a massive difference between researchers coming up with a model that works between two cooperating routers in perfect conditions, versus one router of a lowest-bidder-poorly-maintained-15-years-old model communicating with a PlayStation from within a closet with intervening electrical wiring in the wall and everything else.

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