6 ms·

The spies in your home: How WiFi companies monitor your private life

110 points by austinallegro 2y ago

standapart 2y ago
Perhaps Plume will be the next company to be sued by Texas...
transpute 2y ago
Plume can use IEEE 802.11bf Wi-Fi Sensing to monitor movement in homes, https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/03/from-wi-fi-to-spy-fi-we-test-plumes-new-motion-detection-feature/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/03/from-wi-fi-to-spy-fi... > Plume is doing real-time analysis of extremely low-level RF data pulled from the Superpods' radios. This is real motion detection, with no gimmicks involved.. Consumers who are already paranoid about mesh telemetry really aren't going to love the addition of motion detection. RF/radar human detection is present in Intel Meteor Lake and likely to appear in upcoming "AI" PCs.
- smegger001 2y ago
  why is this a thing we want in our computers again? how does this help consumers buying the hardware exactly? I mean i get why the nsa or adsense might want it but they aren't the ones buying the "AI" PC are they. where is the value ad proposition for consumers?
  - fmajid 2y ago
    It's a "feature" introduced to allow businesses to track their employees' movements in the office.
  - bboygravity 2y ago
    Samsung spyware in TV's and smartphones and Lenovo rootkits in laptops (random examples) have shown that customers only need 1 simple value proposition to be ok with being spied on: slightly cheaper hardware. The companies can offer cheaper hardware and software, because they (and their business and government clients) spy on you. TLDR: end-users are not the only customers.
    - im3w1l 2y ago
      I think this is inaccurate, people simply feel like its hard to keep up with all the abuses and that they are powerless to stop them by voting with their wallet. But they do want politicians to outlaw such practices, which indicates they aren't happy and satisfied with the status quo.
  - ianburrell 2y ago
    I can think of a couple of uses. None of them require the cloud. None are worth the investment. One is sensing where people are in the home. Could be used to turn on lights, but that isn’t worth with LEDs. I would love to know where my cats are without searching the house, Another is sensing gestures. Instead of talking to home assistant, you can make rude gestures. This would primarily be useful for the deaf. For computers, might be good enough for tracking head position. Or track hand position for pointing at screen. Niches uses but useful if can use builtin WiFi than special sensor.
- iwishiknewlisp 2y ago
  I only use ethernet for my computer and I don't even have a wifi card. Switching to a wired ethnernet only router might be the way to go. But there is still other concerns such as the Intel and AMD management engines.
  - transpute 2y ago
    Wi-Fi in 2023 Meteor Lake and 2024 Lunar Lake is integrated into the SoC. In older devices, an M.2 Wi-Fi radio can be physically removed.
    - ac29 2y ago
      Are you talking about CNVi? It predates Meteor Lake by quite a bit. Also, the implementation on the SoC is only part of the WiFi stack, it still needs an additional RF chip.
      - transpute 2y ago
        Thanks, didn't realize it went back to 8th gen. BT/WiFi split between SoC and PCIe device will be fun for IOMMU passthrough.
  - M95D 2y ago
    It doesn't matter. You probably don't live in the forest. You have neighbours, probably that kind of people that don't understand technology and buy the latest fancy TV, laptop, or allow the ISP to install whatever equipment they want "for free". BTW, how are you going to avoid installing the ONT from your ISP?
    - iwishiknewlisp 2y ago
      copper is going to be around for a very long time, 20 years ago we were supposed to all have fiber in 10 years. Yeah, I will believe it when I see it. Also its possible from my understanding to use your own OST. At the very least you could just put it in a makeshift faraday cage. > You probably don't live in the forest. You have neighbours Lot of people in the United States live in very rural areas with their nearest neighbor being 5-10 miles away. The cheapest places to buy are also in rural areas. With the popularity of work from home rising, its not crazy to think a large amount of people will start living in secluded places. Anyway, packing like a sardine in a city is gross and for gross people. If you can't be happy alone in nature, don't deserve to be happy. Urbanites are the lowest species of human, with the highest crime rate and most drug use and homelessness. They are all depressed, neurotic freaks because they live in an environment where you xan't even see the stars in the night sky where there is constant noises every second of the day. No wonder these people all need anti depressants and anti anxiety medication.
rcarmo 2y ago
This kind of thing is why I wish Apple would go back to building Airport routers and only consider “pure” dumb APs as possible replacements.
- hagbard_c 2y ago
  You don't need Apple to achieve wireless freedom, all you need is a few devices which can run OpenWRT. Use one of of them as router, the others as APs and you're set. The router can also be a virtual one, running in a container or VM on the server-under-the-stairs. The APs can be anything which you have laying around or managed to scrounge somewhere. This is what I do home on the range - farm really - where I have several APs spread around the area, connected together using Cat5 using a number of VLANs for different wireless networks: one for the private network, a guest network, an IoT network, an OPS network, a surveillance cam network and a low-speed open network called 'snigelnät' (Swedish for 'slug net'). The APs don't do routing, the virtual router of course does not do WiFi. Some of the APs are also connected to local POE switches for cameras. The whole setup has been mostly maintenance free since I got it up and running some 4 years ago, it offers way more functionality and flexibility than anything offered by commercial entities like Apple and it was cheap to build.
  - rcarmo 2y ago
    I contributed patches to OpenWRT since the WRT54g days and have a couple of travel routers that I upgraded myself. But the quality of decent, home grade compatible equipment is pretty dismal, so if you can tell me what boxes you used I'd be curious. However, I do not want to have to support, flash or manually patch my home Wi-Fi, which currently consists of no less than 5 Airport Extreme base stations connected via Cat 5. But I also don't want it to send data to the cloud or rely on proprietary apps for management (I tolerate Apple's Airport Utlity because it has worked flawlessly for decades).
    - hagbard_c 2y ago
      In the current setup I'm using 3 * 'Xiaomi Mi Router 4A Gigabit Edition' (xiaomi,mi-router-4a-gigabit, ramips/mt7621) as 'main access points' which have thus far worked well. I bought these new specifically for this purpose and never allowed them access to the 'net before flashing OpenWRT. I disable routing/firewall/dhcp on these devices, they are pure access points. I'm also using a number of repurposed devices from different manufacturers - Belkin, Technicolor, Netgear, Asus, D-Link and probably some others I forgot about - for local access points and as local switches, again with routing (etc.) disabled. There are 6 different wireless networks (LAN, guest, ipcam, IoT, OPS and the open but slow 'snigelnät') which are trunked to the APs over VLANs. I'm running a dual-stack network (IPv4/v6) using DHCPv6 for deterministic IPv6 addresses on hosts, all that is handled by the virtual router running in a container on Proxmox on the server-under-the-stairs. This is also where I run Wireguard (VPN) and adblock. Maximum wireless speed varies depending on which AP you're connected to, in practice up to about 550 Mbps when using the Xiaomi 4A APs (advertised as AC1200). Range is sufficient for me to have a WiFi connection when I'm in the middle of a 3.5 hectare field on the opposite side of the road, about 150 m and a number of walls plus some trees separated from the nearest AP.
notepad0x90 2y ago
individuals can avoid this types of devices but how can they protect themselves from their neighbors,especially in cities. RF shielding wall paint? live in a farday cage? I guess the tinfoil hat wearers are appearing less and less crazy these days.
- fmajid 2y ago
  https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/05/anti-wifi-wallpaper-lets-cellular-and-radio-through/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/05/anti-...
- transpute 2y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34424677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34424677 shielding jamming regulation publicity
- raxxorraxor 2y ago
  Old Wifi uses a very similar frequency band to microwaves, so you just need to target your neighbors with a modified microwave that is much stronger than your average wifi router. What could go wrong? Jamming is probably indeed an option. Illegal, but detecting the source and blaming you could be difficult. There is no technical countermeasure against jamming aside from using a different frequency, which would break any form of wifi.
drtgh 2y ago
Maybe of-topic but related, For years I've wanted a robot vacuum cleaner with home mapping (to optimize routes, limit sections even by day, etc.), but they all ask you to connect to the Internet in order to use them... It is madness. Map of your house, habits/presence and so on, I don't want to give any ideas. So I prefer a manual vacuum cleaner as one finish faster and better, at time one do a bit of exercise also. The only way I could think on buying one of such things is to be able to use all such mapping functions without the device being connected to the internet, and also that nothing could be connected to the device remotely if I don't give permission at that moment (Even to program it I'd prefer to connect it via USB to whatever, with the requirement that the app working as UI cannot connect to the internet, of course). I don't like this trend of recent years with devices on general. Looks like "smart" is an euphemism for "spy", spy-tv, spy-phone, spy-home, and so on. The key here is, internet connected.
- poofsoda 2y ago
  Might be worth looking into valetudo, a local-only replacement for cloud services on robot vacuums. This enables mapping, etc. but does not require a connection to the internet.
- sahmeepee 2y ago
  You really don't need mapping to get reasonably efficient cleaning. We have a robot that's nearing 15 years old with no mapping, but the algorithm it uses is pretty effective. The mapping represents huge over-engineering for what is a pretty simple problem.
cut3 2y ago
I was working with a major telecom years ago to use this tech for fall detection to help with caregiving in older adults. Interesting use case I thought.
jiriro 2y ago
With the icloud private relay they say nobody can see both my IP address and the websites I visit. [1] - Your IP address is visible to your network provider and to the first relay, which is operated by Apple. Your DNS records are encrypted, so neither party can see the address of the website you’re trying to visit. - The second relay, which is operated by a third-party content provider, generates a temporary IP address, decrypts the name of the website you requested, and connects you to the site. I wonder whether this disables the surveillance by the wifi companies like Plume. [1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/102602 https://support.apple.com/en-us/102602
bdavbdav 2y ago
“It’s no secret that ISPs can monitor which websites you visit” Given a lot of devices use DoH by default, it’s not quite that stark…
- ThePowerOfFuet 2y ago
  DoH means nothing without ECH, which is still vanishingly rare.

110 points by austinallegro 2y ago

Perhaps Plume will be the next company to be sued by Texas...

Plume can use IEEE 802.11bf Wi-Fi Sensing to monitor movement in homes, https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/03/from-wi-fi-to-spy-fi-we-test-plumes-new-motion-detection-feature/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/03/from-wi-fi-to-spy-fi... > Plume is doing real-time analysis of extremely low-level RF data pulled from the Superpods' radios. This is real motion detection, with no gimmicks involved.. Consumers who are already paranoid about mesh telemetry really aren't going to love the addition of motion detection. RF/radar human detection is present in Intel Meteor Lake and likely to appear in upcoming "AI" PCs.

smegger001 2y ago
why is this a thing we want in our computers again? how does this help consumers buying the hardware exactly? I mean i get why the nsa or adsense might want it but they aren't the ones buying the "AI" PC are they. where is the value ad proposition for consumers?
- fmajid 2y ago
  It's a "feature" introduced to allow businesses to track their employees' movements in the office.
- bboygravity 2y ago
  Samsung spyware in TV's and smartphones and Lenovo rootkits in laptops (random examples) have shown that customers only need 1 simple value proposition to be ok with being spied on: slightly cheaper hardware. The companies can offer cheaper hardware and software, because they (and their business and government clients) spy on you. TLDR: end-users are not the only customers.
  - im3w1l 2y ago
    I think this is inaccurate, people simply feel like its hard to keep up with all the abuses and that they are powerless to stop them by voting with their wallet. But they do want politicians to outlaw such practices, which indicates they aren't happy and satisfied with the status quo.
- ianburrell 2y ago
  I can think of a couple of uses. None of them require the cloud. None are worth the investment. One is sensing where people are in the home. Could be used to turn on lights, but that isn’t worth with LEDs. I would love to know where my cats are without searching the house, Another is sensing gestures. Instead of talking to home assistant, you can make rude gestures. This would primarily be useful for the deaf. For computers, might be good enough for tracking head position. Or track hand position for pointing at screen. Niches uses but useful if can use builtin WiFi than special sensor.
iwishiknewlisp 2y ago
I only use ethernet for my computer and I don't even have a wifi card. Switching to a wired ethnernet only router might be the way to go. But there is still other concerns such as the Intel and AMD management engines.
- transpute 2y ago
  Wi-Fi in 2023 Meteor Lake and 2024 Lunar Lake is integrated into the SoC. In older devices, an M.2 Wi-Fi radio can be physically removed.
  - ac29 2y ago
    Are you talking about CNVi? It predates Meteor Lake by quite a bit. Also, the implementation on the SoC is only part of the WiFi stack, it still needs an additional RF chip.
    - transpute 2y ago
      Thanks, didn't realize it went back to 8th gen. BT/WiFi split between SoC and PCIe device will be fun for IOMMU passthrough.
- M95D 2y ago
  It doesn't matter. You probably don't live in the forest. You have neighbours, probably that kind of people that don't understand technology and buy the latest fancy TV, laptop, or allow the ISP to install whatever equipment they want "for free". BTW, how are you going to avoid installing the ONT from your ISP?
  - iwishiknewlisp 2y ago
    copper is going to be around for a very long time, 20 years ago we were supposed to all have fiber in 10 years. Yeah, I will believe it when I see it. Also its possible from my understanding to use your own OST. At the very least you could just put it in a makeshift faraday cage. > You probably don't live in the forest. You have neighbours Lot of people in the United States live in very rural areas with their nearest neighbor being 5-10 miles away. The cheapest places to buy are also in rural areas. With the popularity of work from home rising, its not crazy to think a large amount of people will start living in secluded places. Anyway, packing like a sardine in a city is gross and for gross people. If you can't be happy alone in nature, don't deserve to be happy. Urbanites are the lowest species of human, with the highest crime rate and most drug use and homelessness. They are all depressed, neurotic freaks because they live in an environment where you xan't even see the stars in the night sky where there is constant noises every second of the day. No wonder these people all need anti depressants and anti anxiety medication.

rcarmo 2y ago

This kind of thing is why I wish Apple would go back to building Airport routers and only consider “pure” dumb APs as possible replacements.

hagbard_c 2y ago
You don't need Apple to achieve wireless freedom, all you need is a few devices which can run OpenWRT. Use one of of them as router, the others as APs and you're set. The router can also be a virtual one, running in a container or VM on the server-under-the-stairs. The APs can be anything which you have laying around or managed to scrounge somewhere. This is what I do home on the range - farm really - where I have several APs spread around the area, connected together using Cat5 using a number of VLANs for different wireless networks: one for the private network, a guest network, an IoT network, an OPS network, a surveillance cam network and a low-speed open network called 'snigelnät' (Swedish for 'slug net'). The APs don't do routing, the virtual router of course does not do WiFi. Some of the APs are also connected to local POE switches for cameras. The whole setup has been mostly maintenance free since I got it up and running some 4 years ago, it offers way more functionality and flexibility than anything offered by commercial entities like Apple and it was cheap to build.
- rcarmo 2y ago
  I contributed patches to OpenWRT since the WRT54g days and have a couple of travel routers that I upgraded myself. But the quality of decent, home grade compatible equipment is pretty dismal, so if you can tell me what boxes you used I'd be curious. However, I do not want to have to support, flash or manually patch my home Wi-Fi, which currently consists of no less than 5 Airport Extreme base stations connected via Cat 5. But I also don't want it to send data to the cloud or rely on proprietary apps for management (I tolerate Apple's Airport Utlity because it has worked flawlessly for decades).
  - hagbard_c 2y ago
    In the current setup I'm using 3 * 'Xiaomi Mi Router 4A Gigabit Edition' (xiaomi,mi-router-4a-gigabit, ramips/mt7621) as 'main access points' which have thus far worked well. I bought these new specifically for this purpose and never allowed them access to the 'net before flashing OpenWRT. I disable routing/firewall/dhcp on these devices, they are pure access points. I'm also using a number of repurposed devices from different manufacturers - Belkin, Technicolor, Netgear, Asus, D-Link and probably some others I forgot about - for local access points and as local switches, again with routing (etc.) disabled. There are 6 different wireless networks (LAN, guest, ipcam, IoT, OPS and the open but slow 'snigelnät') which are trunked to the APs over VLANs. I'm running a dual-stack network (IPv4/v6) using DHCPv6 for deterministic IPv6 addresses on hosts, all that is handled by the virtual router running in a container on Proxmox on the server-under-the-stairs. This is also where I run Wireguard (VPN) and adblock. Maximum wireless speed varies depending on which AP you're connected to, in practice up to about 550 Mbps when using the Xiaomi 4A APs (advertised as AC1200). Range is sufficient for me to have a WiFi connection when I'm in the middle of a 3.5 hectare field on the opposite side of the road, about 150 m and a number of walls plus some trees separated from the nearest AP.

notepad0x90 2y ago

individuals can avoid this types of devices but how can they protect themselves from their neighbors,especially in cities. RF shielding wall paint? live in a farday cage? I guess the tinfoil hat wearers are appearing less and less crazy these days.

fmajid 2y ago
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/05/anti-wifi-wallpaper-lets-cellular-and-radio-through/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/05/anti-...
transpute 2y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34424677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34424677 shielding jamming regulation publicity
raxxorraxor 2y ago
Old Wifi uses a very similar frequency band to microwaves, so you just need to target your neighbors with a modified microwave that is much stronger than your average wifi router. What could go wrong? Jamming is probably indeed an option. Illegal, but detecting the source and blaming you could be difficult. There is no technical countermeasure against jamming aside from using a different frequency, which would break any form of wifi.

drtgh 2y ago

Maybe of-topic but related, For years I've wanted a robot vacuum cleaner with home mapping (to optimize routes, limit sections even by day, etc.), but they all ask you to connect to the Internet in order to use them... It is madness. Map of your house, habits/presence and so on, I don't want to give any ideas. So I prefer a manual vacuum cleaner as one finish faster and better, at time one do a bit of exercise also. The only way I could think on buying one of such things is to be able to use all such mapping functions without the device being connected to the internet, and also that nothing could be connected to the device remotely if I don't give permission at that moment (Even to program it I'd prefer to connect it via USB to whatever, with the requirement that the app working as UI cannot connect to the internet, of course). I don't like this trend of recent years with devices on general. Looks like "smart" is an euphemism for "spy", spy-tv, spy-phone, spy-home, and so on. The key here is, internet connected.

poofsoda 2y ago
Might be worth looking into valetudo, a local-only replacement for cloud services on robot vacuums. This enables mapping, etc. but does not require a connection to the internet.
sahmeepee 2y ago
You really don't need mapping to get reasonably efficient cleaning. We have a robot that's nearing 15 years old with no mapping, but the algorithm it uses is pretty effective. The mapping represents huge over-engineering for what is a pretty simple problem.

cut3 2y ago

I was working with a major telecom years ago to use this tech for fall detection to help with caregiving in older adults. Interesting use case I thought.

jiriro 2y ago

With the icloud private relay they say nobody can see both my IP address and the websites I visit. [1] - Your IP address is visible to your network provider and to the first relay, which is operated by Apple. Your DNS records are encrypted, so neither party can see the address of the website you’re trying to visit. - The second relay, which is operated by a third-party content provider, generates a temporary IP address, decrypts the name of the website you requested, and connects you to the site. I wonder whether this disables the surveillance by the wifi companies like Plume. [1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/102602 https://support.apple.com/en-us/102602

bdavbdav 2y ago

“It’s no secret that ISPs can monitor which websites you visit” Given a lot of devices use DoH by default, it’s not quite that stark…

ThePowerOfFuet 2y ago
DoH means nothing without ECH, which is still vanishingly rare.