You can also buy your own modem to further reduce the dependence on xfinity.

Someone correct me if Arris has been up to shady shit over the past 6 years

I was just considering this to make pihole installation a bit cleaner. Any good wifi routers to try and get?

Ubiquiti isn't perfect but they make a really good product and you don't have to connect it with a cloud

Xfinity is absolutely collecting (and probably selling) data on the traffic of every device on your network.

They're doing that anyway via the modem. Unless you are tunnelling everything your ISP sees every byte you send.

I work for a different large ISP who provides modems and routers to our customers, but not this specific feature (being a bit vague because I know at one point mentioning the company’s name on social media would result in the post being reviewed by the social media team/referred to security for anything discussing internal processes, and while Lemmy probably isn’t on their radar I’d rather not risk it).

The amount of data we can see if you’re using our routers is pretty crazy, and most people have no idea. We can see exactly what you have on your network and what it’s doing. If you’re just using the modem and not the router, we have much more limited visibility. We don’t have the capacity to monitor everything everyone is doing all the time, so if you’re using your own equipment (and you’re not using our DNS service), it’s unlikely we have much data on your activity. Storage in the scale needed to store what everyone is doing gets expensive.

I’ve always used my own equipment, and I make sure everyone in my family has their own equipment as well. I would absolutely advise against using your ISP’s equipment if your goal is privacy.

Can you recommend some trustworthy hardware?

I know gl.inet is probably best for routers, but are any of the mainstream brands more trustworthy than others? TP-Link, Ubiquiti, etc.? I recently got a Zyxel, are those okay?

They used to charge you more for unlimited data if you didn't use their modem. Renting their modem plus getting unlimited data was $30/month, but just getting unlimited data with your own modem was $50/month.

Not relevant any more though, as (at least in my area) they completely removed the data caps.

I'm so glad I have a local ISP that provides 10Gbps for cheaper than Comcast's 1Gbps.

It's always been a ripoff from the start. The modem / router is far cheaper than whatever they charge you to rent it over a year. Additionally they were broadcasting public wifi hotspots from your rented modem for a while (probably still are) and now this. Having said that, walk into any random friend's house, and what will you see? A big stupid rented Comcast modem.

I tried... Comcast would "forget" the modem 3 times a month and would have to call and read them the MAC address again etc... fuck Comcast

They've changed it since covid so now if you use their modem/router combo, you get unlimited data for free. If you don't use their modem and router, you have to pay $30/mo to remove the data caps or keep yourself under 1.2TB for the month.

The internet is increasingly a weapon

This is the way

Yup. Turns out the tin foil brigade were right the entire fucking time.

Except that TDK is fiction, so the billionaire has morals

I did like that old Reddit post where someone did the math on the charges he’d get for this and everything else was a rounding error compared to the hacking charges

That's what they are deploying. This has been possible for awhile, but has recently gotten much creepier: https://groundy.com/articles/wifi-densepose-full-body-tracking-through-walls-using-your/

OPs article links to another article at TechCrunch . That article states:

As first reported by The Verge, the new Wi-Fi Motion feature works for advanced Xfinity gateways XB7 and newer models and is opt-in, which means users can choose whether to switch on the feature in the Xfinity app.

So it seems like for now it's only this one model that can do it, if you believe them. Frankly, I wouldn't sniff that opt-in claim either because I'm fairly certain I know which orifice they pulled it out of.

Wrap it in copper and run a hard line to a second router.

If it's just a modem with no WiFi, then it's not capable of this specific thing.

You had a typo in there but it still works. It'll be profitable by sending you directed ads based on when you're home and what rooms you're in most.

Looks like it's a feature of the router they provide you if you don't bring your own.