They are likely going to have access. Lots of things have built in cellular modems these days, and your cable provider already uses your cable modem as a hotspot for other people.
You can do things like physically modifying your TV, or seeing if there are undocumented settings to disable things.
The traffic was separated so that anything on the public hotspot was not attributed to the private subscriber network.
Secondly for years I lived somewhere very remote so that meant that hardly anyone ever got to use my broadband connection via such a hotspot, but I got to use hundreds of other peoples hotspots when I was somewhere less isolated.
I was quite happy to opt in to this system as I benefitted hugely from it.
Yes. Xfinity is the big one. Their devices create two hotspots: one for the customer and one to power their Xfinity WiFi service and for bandwidth offloading for their cellular service.
Yea this almosts sounds like it could be a great idea with proper execution, nothing like this in the UK. Imagine if they were upfront and said "well knock a tenner (or whatever is reasonable in the US) if you allow your access point to be used as a hotspot"
It turns out there are several similar services offered in the UK by ISP's like O2, Sky, and BT¹ (recently rebranded as EE-WiFi²) who claim to be the UK's largest WiFi Hotspot Network. Perhaps that's due to it being opt-out on their routers since it was first introduced over a decade ago.
Yes. Cox has been doing it for years. They boast citywide hotspot access for all subscribers. I formerly thought that this hotspot network consisted of dedicated APs which they mount and maintain on utility poles in public places. But that’s just the start.
Every Cox customer has a Panoramic WiFi router that advertises as a member of the “CoxWiFi” SSID, and other customers can authenticate there and access the Internet through your connection. This is on a strictly opt-out basis.
I’ve opted-out, and also my router is permanently in Bridge Mode, so there is no technical way for me to provide anyone a WiFi connection. But all my neighbors do, even if they are blissfully unaware.
The best thing about fibre rollout in my region is that the ONT appears to act as the modem so I don't need to set the modem/router into bridge mode any more.
Absolutely. Independently of the unauthorized sharing of your bandwidth, ISP gateways are notoriously insecure and underspec'ed. They also have nasty backdoors[0].
Major ISPs in the US have been doing it for at least a decade. Xfinity Wifi [1] claims over 20 million wifi hotspots provided through customer routers.
If its a hotspot you'll have to login to authenticate, so presumably the traffic is uniquely identifiable. I'd hope when LE contact ISP for details theyd be able to go oh that ip address is here but it was actually this persons traffic.
I'm fairly confident that ISPs do not log all customer traffic, especially for an indeterminate amount of time. There would not be enough storage on the planet available.
Plus the DNS spying even after disabling their safety stuff (impossible to change DNS on Comcast Xfinity-provided gateway). Still trying to get as good speeds with my own equipment.
Router: Something I have to upgrade, though trying for approx a full gig speeds at the modem first. Eying an OpenWrt-compatible one. Looks like the GL.iNet GL-MT6000 (Flint 2) comes with it preinstalled! ( https://www.gl-inet.com/en-us/products/gl-mt6000?country=US )
Cloudflare sets up a reverse proxy as part of their core offering, so by default they can MITM your proxy. The “orange cloud” by a DNS record means it points to their proxy instead of your server.
That's how you get DDOS protection / edge delivery, so it's not a dark pattern. I imagine it's the main reason why people would DNS through them in the first place.
An “orange cloud” with no other indication to represent a feature that is enabled-by-default (with implicitly enabled analytics) sounds like quite the dark pattern. The UI makes the DNS record seem to point to A (your entry) but actually points to B (Cloudflare). This isn’t an oversight, it’s an attempt to obfuscate.
Even if the choice to enable it by default makes sense for Cloudflare’s userbase, the implications are hidden and non-obvious.
It's essentially the entire reason to use Cloudflare.
As sibling mentions it is indeed labeled and not just some icon. People just refer to the orange cloud UI for it for convenience and because it makes it easy to spot whether you have it on or not.
But regarding the icon, the icon is their company logo, it really is the primary feature. It's also not like you have to go find it in settings to turn it off after adding DNS record, it's part of the form when you add the record (default on, yes), and it's prominent when viewing the record.
It's the reason for its existence and the reason people are choosing it. If they are making a mistake, hoodwinked by hype, that's totally unrelated to the point being discussed. I think you've just seized the opportunity to post your disdain for them without regard to the actual topic being discussed.
I would say that Cloudfare having customers who don't know exactly what they are getting (into) is actually a Cloudfare problem they should take responsibility for.
Fair, but I don't use YouTube as much anymore. Except for music and old videos it lost its purpose for me. I mostly rely on word of mouth now, a friend recommends me this art channel or that show. If I like it I forward it to another friend etc.
I still feel bad for what is happening though, it's wrong and anyone with our best interests in mind would agree generated content needs to be firewalled from the human internet.
Log in, pay for premium, and use the like and subscribe buttons liberally. Use the downvote button too. It learns.
My feed is really fantastic. Once a month or so I notice some AI slop (usually with a handful of views - clearly the algo testing something out). Thumbs down, problem solved.
You can do things like physically modifying your TV, or seeing if there are undocumented settings to disable things.