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Posted by Curiositry 10 hours ago

Your TV can see through walls (2025)(maurycyz.com)
224 points | 98 commentspage 2
darkwater 8 hours ago|
Now, about the wifi part, why isn't there an Home Assistant extension that detects already room presence magically exploiting all of this??
sudorm-rf--no-p 8 hours ago||
There is: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/espectre-wi-fi-motion-...
timthorn 8 hours ago||
There is with Zigbee: https://github.com/orgs/home-assistant/discussions/960
darkwater 6 hours ago||
But this relies on Hue. I would like something at HA level directly, aka a zero-effort solution if you already run a zigbee swarm either directly controlled by HA or via zigbee2mqtt
gbxyz 9 hours ago||
See also: Van Eck Phreaking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Eck_phreaking
mrmlz 7 hours ago|
As made popular in Cryptonomicon!
walrus01 8 hours ago||
see also, presence detection of humans via wifi signals: https://arxiv.org/html/2308.06773v2
trafalgar_nah 51 minutes ago||
Had to pull out my calculator to digest the calculations, phew. I'm a math major that's been out of the game for a bit, I guess i'm getting rusty.
ThePumpkinGod 9 hours ago||
So, a bad actor can now know when I'm at my house or not, I'm sure that's fine and won't be problematic
ClikeX 6 hours ago||
Bad actors, and any WiFi capable hardware in your house. There's an official spec for it[1], and some routers already have the option built in. I remember seeing papers about this over 10 years ago, someone at MIT did it for a paper.

Philips Hue also has it built in to their newer lights, where they measure the Zigbee signals. They call it MotionAware[2]. Basically anything with an antenna and a bit of compute is able to do this now.

[1] IEEE 802.11bf-2025 [2] https://www.philips-hue.com/en-hk/support/article/motionawar...

jaapz 5 hours ago|||
Even philips hue documentation is now vibed
ClikeX 3 hours ago||
It's probably just AI translated. The original docs are Dutch.
reaperducer 4 hours ago|||
There's an official spec for it[1], and some routers already have the option built in.

~~Comcast~~ Xfinity actually advertises it on the radio as a feature.

st_goliath 6 hours ago|||
> So, a bad actor can now know when I'm at my house or not.

A bad actor who wants to act on that information can just wait near your house on a workday morning and watch you leave, likely not to return for the better part of the day. No techno-voodoo required.

nkrisc 3 hours ago|||
Bad actors have been doing that for millennia using their eyes.

This makes it more remote and subtle, but it’s not a new threat.

pluralmonad 35 minutes ago||
Not just remote, automatic as well. IMO an entirely new class of threat over "my neighbor knows when I'm home."
rightnutwingjob 9 hours ago|||
Even having three security cameras around the perimeter of your house can allow quite precise location and activity detection inside the house via their audio steams.

Those mics can be quite sensitive.

ThePumpkinGod 8 hours ago|||
I don't have security cameras in my house but that's actually interesting to see how things most people have in their house can (and does?) used to spy on them.
pmontra 6 hours ago||
Phones and smart TVs, probably other appliances. My SO used to be surprised to receive ads about stuff we talked about minutes before. I finally looked at her phone, disabled a bunch of things in the stock Android settings, those timely ads went away. I didn't even have to install Blockada, uBO for FF (and uMatrix and other addons) like I do on my devices.
wafflemaker 5 hours ago||
Can you elaborate on what did you disable?

I feel like by disabling ads in most devices, I'm also taking away the best source of information on what bad actors (here ad companies) managed to exfiltrate about me.

If there only was a way to sell ad space about myself and learn from it what others know.

trashb 2 hours ago|||
Most companies don't allow you to turn off data collection easily. What they do allow is turning off the response to that data (displaying relevant ads).
pmontra 3 hours ago|||
I mailed her a summary for future reference. It's quite detailed but it was not in English and the phone was not in English too. So forgive me but I asked Claude to translate it and guess the right menu and option names for an English Android. It should be enough to give you the idea of what I did. It was a Samsung phone, not a S series.

Here it is:

---

Tapping <first name last name> at the top of Settings opens the Samsung account notice, and the Terms of Service show as not accepted. I'm leaving them unaccepted and not continuing.

1. Security and privacy

Controls and alerts: left Microphone access on, because permissions will be set individually per app.

More privacy settings:

Send diagnostic data

Set to Off

Samsung

Improve personalized ads based on data from this phone: you have to go to the Samsung account settings.

Receive news and special offers on this phone: same

Customization Service for your phone: same

Going to Accounts and backup > Samsung Cloud > Data backed up: there is no data being backed up to Samsung.

Going to Samsung Cloud shows that Bluetooth, Calendar, Contacts and Wi-Fi are synced.

Google

Google personalization service: set to Off

Permission manager:

Switched to Ask every time:

  - Chrome
  - Maps
  - Meet
  - Facebook
  - Google
  - Messages
  - Speech Recognition & Synthesis from Google
  - Samsung Keyboard
  - TikTok
Still set to "Allowed only while in use": Camera and WhatsApp

Activity controls

Web & App Activity: turned off, but I did not delete the history

Timeline (Location History): was already off since January 1, 2025

YouTube History: left on

Personalized ads:

  - My Ad Center is turned off
  - Partner ads settings, Visit My Ad Center, Ads you can control, Get started,
    Cancel
Everything is disabled, as expected after turning off the Google personalization service

2. Ads

Ads privacy

Ad topics: 0

App-suggested ads: 0

Ad measurement: - Allow ad measurement: set to Off - Reset measurement data: reset

Reset advertising ID: confirmed, reset

Delete advertising ID: deleted

Usage & diagnostics: disabled

3. Remote management

After I tapped it, it said "Installing applications" After a few minutes, at the second login, I got in and it showed me a Smart Tutor screen. I went to Apps, found it and uninstalled it. It would have allowed the phone to be managed remotely by customer support, I don't know which one.

Facebook

Settings & privacy

Settings, Apps and websites, turned off "Apps, websites and games"

Business integrations

Activity log, Apps and websites off Facebook, Posts from apps and websites: it was empty. Your apps: it was empty.

motbus3 7 hours ago||||
Yes. But depending who is doing the work they can just see what Bluetooth devices are around each hour of the day too... It sucks that everything we have seems to be usable against us
jack_pp 3 hours ago||
and if you go completely dark whoever is interested can just install a camera near your apartment and get that info anyway. you just can't hide in a city if you are not actively trying to hide, never could either even before tech, it was just more expensive.
SlightlyLeftPad 7 hours ago|||
Really? They can’t seem to pick up a conversation happening directly in front of them.
alt227 6 hours ago|||
Or they could just knock on your door and see if you answer.
cowlevel 8 hours ago|||
They already knew this from your cell phone not being in airplane mode.
ThePumpkinGod 8 hours ago|||
If I ever try to hide (which is probably impossible at this time and age), I will probably just break my phone not like I can use it anyways every single act in it sends data to too many places to count.
guax 7 hours ago||
I assume the problem is still tracing and association. So long as there is no direct link between you and the device, there is no saying if that is you or not. So grabbing a used phone via cash transaction from someone and only turning it on and using outside of your usual locations could be enough to have it being "anonymous". Then, using a vpn or other proxy that hides your network can make you very hard to find, so long as you don't associate with your real identity in any substantial form.

The danger with these technologies is not when they allow to precise track you once your general vicinity is known, that was always possible by putting some goons after you. General mass surveillance that is constantly tagged is the problem, flock, PRISM and the other stuffs.

ClikeX 6 hours ago|||
There was a TV show in the Netherlands, called Hunted I believe. Contestants had to go on the run and avoid getting caught by the hunting team without doing anything illegal. Or staying to long in a single place, so no camping in the middle of a park (which would technically be illegal anyway).

Long story short, barely anyone got anywhere. Because simply doing an ATM transaction to get the cash already triggered the signal where they were. Not to mention the amount of government owned cameras. As well as being in proximity of anyone still online.

Complete anonymity is virtually impossible, depending on the country.

alt227 5 hours ago|||
The problem with that show is it is all simulated. They have a camera crew following them round so they cant exactly hide properly.

The show is set up so that if the contestants do anything on a given list (like access ATMs, pay for something with a known card, walking past cctv cameras etc) then the camera crew would notify the hunters. Thats how they got that intel so that they wouldnt need to use actual methods.

I dont think you can use that show as an actual example of somebody on the run. Its so far away from reality and set up to be interesting to the viewer, its just not realistic at all.

ClikeX 3 hours ago||
My point is that there are a gazillion contact points in any modern environment where you lose anonymity. Not that they can track you in real time like that.

The amount of camera's in and around shopping areas is staggering. And the requirement to have a smartphone on hand is increasing every day, at least in the Netherlands.

trashb 2 hours ago||||
Hunted is a different case tho, there they know the person's identity and need to find there location (and direction).

In the parent case the supposed illegal activity is associated with a device (possibly the location) and they are trying to find the identity of the person associated.

nkrisc 2 hours ago|||
A good reason to keep a moderate amount of cash hidden on hand. Not so much that losing it would ruin you, but enough that you wouldn’t need to visit an ATM if you actually needed to hide for some reason.
IAmBroom 42 minutes ago||
Yes, I always carry at least $1000 in case I have to suddenly go on the lamb from tech-savvy three-letter organizations.

And three passports for three different identities.

trashb 2 hours ago|||
You can be identified quite quickly by other factors if someone with access to data is looking for you. Some factors are writing style networking metadata (who do you contact) and search queries. Especially big data companies (facebook google) are tracking you even if not logged in. Some of these factors are very hard to change from one moment to another, and most people are unaware that this data is used.

The problem with mass surveillance is that even if you are aware you are actively transmitting and your data is still caught in the dragnet for example with camera doorbells and other surveillance apparatus like flock, or visiting a site with facebook ad trackers. You transmit either way by being, if you travel in public with phone or without a phone, both is an identifying datapoint.

lencastre 8 hours ago|||
there is always the risk of the isolated Faraday caged house
gruez 7 hours ago||
Can't they already do that by snooping on ARP traffic on your home LAN? Failing that, if they can get whatever shitty wifi chipset they're using to enter promiscuous mode, they can also sniff all STAs that are in the vicinity, and with some ML they can probably figure out which MAC belongs to your phone.
fortran77 1 hour ago||
There's no TV here. There's an ATSC broadcast signal and an SDR with a waterfall display.
crunkmcgoop 1 hour ago||
I’d rather have the Chinese lady with the nice ass sex my secrets out of me
thopterek 9 hours ago||
Thank you for more paranoia
sweetdingoes 5 hours ago||
Awareness of possibilities is not paranoia. One implies sickness. Healthism?
rightnutwingjob 9 hours ago|||
π RuView turns commodity WiFi signals into real-time spatial intelligence, vital sign monitoring, and presence detection — all without a single pixel of video.

https://github.com/ruvnet/RuView

inexcf 7 hours ago||
Just so anyone who reads this knows: This is a well known SCAM repo. The install instructions are incomplete and when you manage to get it running you will realize the data it produces is just random except for pre-recorded simulated data. If you check youtube for it you will find hundreds of completely AI generated Videos with not one of them showing the actual thing working. And all while trying to sell you some hardware.

https://github.com/deletexiumu/wifi-densepose " SCAM ALERT: Technical audit reveals this project is a non-functional AI-generated facade with fake CSI data, no trained models, and suspected star inflation"

NoboruWataya 3 hours ago|||
Slight aside, but I went to look at some of the open issues on that ruvnet repo to see if this is discussed. It's quite an eery feeling reading through them. Every "discussion" is just bots talking to bots.
IAmBroom 40 minutes ago|||
So it's the modern version of "smoking banana peels to get high"? (Which was a well-known "fact" in my youth, supposedly injected by the FBI to reduce drug use.) (It doesn't.) (<-- personal investigation)
neverbeenasked 7 hours ago||
yeah, now I gotta unplug TV too
iamnothere 2 hours ago||
That won’t help, this is about TV station signals broadcast from outside your house
protocolture 5 hours ago||
Thats nothing, my old tv could predict incoming phone calls.
alt227 4 hours ago|
When I was young I could tell when the neighbours turned on their tv by the UHF whine.
blurbleblurble 2 hours ago|
IEEE ISAC, look it up
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