Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion

Posted by bearsyankees 6/30/2025

Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion(www.xfinity.com)

668 points | 501 commentspage 5

nopenopenope88 7/1/2025|

Myself and my buddies worked on it. This might sound ripe with "conspiracy". I know how it's going to sound. Take it for what you will. Initially wanting to know things like, whose in what room, how many people, and what your actively doing, who you socialize with most etc. Been working on this since they bought Skydog/Powercloud. Purposely "helped" design the spec for wifi since Wifi 5 or earlier. How do we get more sensor devices into the home? Build an IoT line of business and make wifi "better". Imagine seeing the the entire USA on a map (comcast "national watchtower" tool), and then seeing what each router can "see", including those xfinity hotspots. One, giant, signal map of devices with tagged metadata such as a percentage associated to "who" owns the device, what the device is, and what apps you have installed, which you are using at this current moment, any health and biometric data in case grandma fell over and can't get up. There is always a hidden SSID transmitting. p0f is nicely preinstalled on the wifi router cpe. Now create the standard firmware RDK for worldwide use purchasing cable/tv networks in other countries. (Sky, IoT companies in Italy). Now give them more ability, like to unlock your home "MyQ" (comcast ventures "investment"), why stop there, get into businesses such as taco bell with LoRaWAN. Add xfinity mobile for that extra juice of seeing all the little SIMS (game) characters on the (very real) map so you can recommend to them how to better schedule their life. It's all there. Now take that same map, and make it global. Attend the next SCTE conference and see it all for yourself. They're proud of it. I thought, I was too.

transpute 7/1/2025|

In a future Visible Social Network movie, through-wall sensing creators could livestream their own activity telemetry as a global public demo.

Everyone would follow suit, or would they? See the movie and find out!

anonu 7/1/2025||

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.

slicktux 7/1/2025||

I recall years ago reading a research paper on WiFi signals being used to track people through wall using MIMO…then American Express investing in the technology and now this…

daft_pink 7/1/2025||

Are there any kits to place my comcast modem in a faraday cage?

raxxorraxor 7/1/2025||

Looking forward for Wifi singnal scrambling. I mean if we take things like Spectre seriously (I don't to a large degree), this would certainly qualify as well.

jl6 6/30/2025||

The race is on to find the cheapest/easiest decoy that can simulate such motion (because if everything is moving, then nothing is moving). A tube man in every corner?

transpute 6/30/2025|

The race is already on for biometric fingerprinting via WiFi Sensing, e.g. via heart rate.

tjpnz 6/30/2025||

>WiFi Motion is not a home security service and is not professionally monitored.

That's funny because it does sound like they suggest it be used as such.

aurizon 7/1/2025||

3 cat feeders(small dispensers) 3 different recurring times, 3 cats = never a dull moment for the FBI on watch...

godelski 7/1/2025||

Great, I always wanted to

  - be able to spy on my neighbors
  - add more surveillance systems into my house
  - have my neighbors be able to spy on me through my walls

I get that there is utility to this thing but come on, they don't even guarantee that the information is private and they say they collect it. Does the boot really taste that good? Why are we so obsessed with surveillance and giving people the power to surveil ourselves? Why are so many devs complicit in developing these tools? Again, I can understand how there's honest and good nature utility to them, but just because something has utility doesn't mean you get to ignore any harm. This trade-off is literally the whole of ethics in engineering. Engineers both create the tools for utopia and the tools for autocracy. The bitter truth is that often tools for autocracies are created while trying to create tools for utopias. But frankly, I'm not convinced this one is in that ambiguous gray zone...

transpute 7/1/2025||

15 years of research and 5 years of HN discussion. It can always get worse, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29901979

  We could use terahertz spectrum to detect specific molecules and in turn use terahertz frequencies and radios as a way to track specific ingredients in food or pollutants in the air

Is there a PKD sci-fi story about terahertz-radar smart lock breathalyzer (substances, viruses) with conditional door entry/exit rules?

WillPostForFood 7/1/2025|||

Engineers both create the tools for utopia and the tools for autocracy.

It's the same tool much of the time, including here. Utopia is getting a warning there is an intruder in your residence before you walk in, or better deterring that from happening. Autocracy is the government tracking you in your house.

godelski 7/1/2025||

I agree, but the reason I'm less convinced this is in that gray zone is because, frankly, break-ins are relatively rare. In general, crime is highly localized. So while I'm sure it is useful to some people, I'm quite suspicious that it is not helpful for most people. Maybe gives them peace of mind, but that peace of mind can increase paranoia. We'll just have to see the rates of false positives to false negatives...

But I do see this as an extremely useful tool for autocrats, hackers, and abusive relationships. I'm willing to bet that this is used by these malicious actors far more than your average user gets a true positive detection. And we really should be clear, the danger is far more than autocrats.

vpShane 7/1/2025||

Good questions.

Hilift 7/1/2025|

Given that your ISP is monitoring your DNS, is wifi motion (usage is probably as valuable) really that bad?

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