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Comcast turns your Xfinity WiFi into a home motion detector (www.bleepingcomputer.com)
submitted 2 months ago by [B] to c/pulse_of_truth@infosec.pub
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Comcast is promoting WiFi-based motion detection as a part of its new Xfinity Shield home protection platform, allowing routers and wireless devices to detect people moving through a home without cameras or motion sensors. [...]

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[–] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Any modem needs the latest DOCSIS which is ostensibly a standard but in practice is a big opaque proprietary blob afacit more or less shared among telecoms that adhere to the "standard". Using an older DOCSIS or one without the Comcast's latest-greatest enhancements (hence the quotes around "standard") will absolutely sacrifice line quality.

Moreover Comcast gives you their latest-best modem for negotiation with their upstream WAN and replaces it when it ages out or gets recalled. With bridge mode enabled, it's as close to a dumb pipe as you're going to get without sacrificing quality.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago* (1 child)

    I would much rather make that sacrifice than trust Comcast everyday of the week. Not disputing you at all but I don’t trust a thing about that company an never will

    Edit: and I should add, I haven’t personally noticed any difference in quality

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    You are trusting them either way. If it is your router to their modem, or your modem to their local relays, either way they can view all the traffic you put across the line.

    AT&T doesn't really leave me a choice, I have to use their stupid router/modem, but of course that's treated as a dumb gateway for my own router. I've turned off their wifi radios and enabled their equivalent to gateway mode. It's pretty much the best you can do beside put it in a faraday cage.

    The notable step ups you can do is DNS over HTTPS, or full VPN tunneling, although I always assume most the VPN providers are doing the same spying, not to mention the performance hit.

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