Mom and daughter SUE Comcast for 'smuggling' public Wi-Fi hotspot into their home A mother and daughter are suing Comcast claiming the cable giant's router in their home was offering public Wi-Fi without their permission. Comcast-supplied routers broadcast an encrypted, private wireless network for people at home, plus a non-encrypted network called XfinityWiFi that can be used by nearby subscribers. So if …
You as a customer can opt out of it and not have it.
"and places a burden on their bandwidth and electricity bills."
Thing with what they claim burdens their electricity, that is a stretch since the router is already there using power for your home wifi anyway, the open doesn't incur anymore power then if its off. Bandwidth well, you are not charged for any bandwidth used by the open wifi as that is separate.
"Bandwidth well, you are not charged for any bandwidth used by the open wifi as that is separate."
So is it charged to the person using your hot spot? I can see so many ways this can go wrong. Whose IP address is logged when the war driver uses your hot spot to visit terrorists-r-us.com?
Its not as open as you think, i think you are still required to login with your comcast account to use those hotspots.
I don't think that's quite true. I have an uncle who has Concast at his summer cottage where he only pays for internet 4-1/2 months a year but the Xfinity is up all year round. If memory serves from the too much turkey holiday weekend you only have to login to get your Comcast email and such but I was able to surf the net while I was there and I don't recall having to do anything special. Actually, I think even his TV uses it for some damn thing or another. Of course I may be wrong as it's all a bit fuzzy, you understand that side of the family actually goes through far more wine than turkey on the holiday.
Ah you refer to the nsa username and password built in, the one that feeds all the private stuff over to them through the public interface before it actually is sent to the real destination server itself (like watching a crime unfold before it happens), and all without them needing to know your wifi encryption keys.
Did you sign up for that? Case closed, comcast wins. Judge roll over let me tickle your tummy.
It's open to anyone with Comcast creds, whether they are actually "their's" is open to guess-work. Next, that's also assuming that the firewall between the Xfinity "Open" network and the local WiFi is absolutely, never-never will fail, secure. I already know of one breach here that I can't patch/mitigate (TCP 32764) in our router. There are more but this is especially egregious if a breach between Xfinity and the local WiFi should occur. There's a lot more where they came from, but why bother. Here we have a choice between Comcast and Comcast. I'm in the city proper (Fresno, CA, USA) and would have to move by a mile in any direction before AT&T would be an option. [There's my emergency MiFi but 3G only and real, real, low cap.]
I wish her luck, but all that'll happen is that this will drag on for years and nothing will ever come of it. I'll be feeding the worms. Comcast does get its monies worth from their legal beagles.
BT do this in the UK with their HomeHub product. The public connecting to the public SSID broadcast from your router get completely separate IP addressing to the ones used on your home network. The public user then logs in to an ISP captive portal using their own credentials so the ISP has a way of tracking who was logged in, where they came from and what they did.
In BT's case, they also claim they put a Quality of Service policy on the router so the home network always takes priority over the public one and therefore your service shouldn't be impacted.
Ol' Grumpy: "In BT's case, they also claim they put a Quality of Service policy on the router so the home network always takes priority over the public one and therefore your service shouldn't be impacted."
"shouldn't" is I guess the operative word. Only if transactions were instant would this be the case. Due to the latency of the link, once a data stream has been established, packets can continue to appear from the remote end for a relatively long time even if the local end tries to put a stop to them, potentially saturating the download path and so interfering with downloads the high priority user wishes to make.
Of course, how much effect this has in practice is open to debate.
In BT's case, they also claim they put a Quality of Service policy on the router so the home network always takes priority over the public one and therefore your service shouldn't be impacted.
And do you get any way of verifying this? Sounds like a great deal for BT as most people won't notice this is part of the deal; if they do, won't understand the implications of this; if they do, won't be in a position to monitor their service based on overall usage; if they are, can be brushed off with a quick "Oops! Our mistake! <CLICKETY-CLICK> There, fixed that for you."
ISPs in general have a history of selling customers one thing and giving them something entirely less. Why would there be any expectation that things would be different in this case?
"... the open doesn't incur anymore power then if its off. "
Dude I agree with you basically, but the above is wrong. If it is on and a ton of people are using it without you knowing, technically the routers CPU, memory and modulator are being hammered. Remember, this isn't exactly a passive signal. But, it's still a small little device.
But, yeh I agree with what you're generally saying about the power. However, I agree with everything else the woman states entirely. So you can opt out, but why by default are you opted in? Like she states, reduced costs.
So I guess we can put Comcast on the slimy corp. cork board, but is there room left?
@ MyBackDoor and Eddy Ito
No, Comcast stole the slimy cork board, brutally beat a sweet, cookie-baking grandmother with it, then used the bloodied, splintered remains to burn some orphan's Christmas presents >:)
http://www.cnet.com/news/comcast-wins-worst-company-in-america/
Whilst we're on the subject of Time Warner, some of us who've bought into their VoIP service have found the cable modem contains a $35 battery which we have to replace ourselves at our cost when it fails in order to continue having phone service during a power outage! Their equiptment they should umaintain!
I do wonder how many know their battery has died. As one who has even a vague idea of what the status lights on the modem mean, I doubt my aged neighbors (or fuzzy studies majors) have ever looked at the pretty blinking lights. I''m sure they'll find out in the next earthquake.
... who've bought into their VoIP service have found the cable modem contains a $35 battery which we have to replace ourselves at our cost when it fails in order to continue having phone service during a power outage! Their equiptment they should umaintain!
Which is why I told Verizon to Fuck Off when they tried to foist a FiOS upgrade on me. I had already heard about that one from a business acquaintance who got stung!
"You as a customer can opt out of it and not have it."
The point is, really, that it should not be opt-out in the first place. Imagine buying a car which, by factory default, gives you about 5 mpg unless you opt-out (in writing, in triplicate, with a copy to the commissioner of whatever...), after which it will give you about 50 mpg. Would you accept that as proper business practice?
I didn't think so...
Opt-out deals should, in my personal opinion, not be allowed to even be offered. Many customers do not make the effort to go through all the tiny print and then call up their representative, fill in all the forms, send them in to the right department, and so on and so on.
If people want a service, they will be willing to opt-in. So let the providers offer opt-in stuff instead of basically trying to sell the whole boathouse to everybody who just wants a paddle.
"Imagine buying a car which, by factory default, gives you about 5 mpg"
That analogy doesn't work. What might be more accurate, is to say you buy a car, and in the fine print you didn't read, allows random strangers to temporarily sit in for a ride. That is, you notice people randomly come in for a ride, and randomly leave again.
Additional fuel consumption might be a bit hard to claim, because as I understand it, they don't count that additional bandwidth towards your own plan. Additional power? As above, good luck with that, you're talking fractions of cents.
But what you WILL notice is there is less space, thus carrying capacity in your car - at random intervals. I don't know how or IF the Comcast hardware prioritises the traffic to the actual owner rather than the "borrower".
I don't remember about Comcast, but I do remember this similar thing happening with a number of carriers. I'm quite sure it's in the contract somewhere - even if the bastards had to bury it in a sub-section translated from Swahilii.
"because as I understand it, they don't count that additional bandwidth towards your own plan"
My experience, across multiple vendors in multiple areas in the US is that they never, ever deliver anything close to the actual bandwidth they sell you ( because buried in the contract is the fact that 50MB plan actually means up to, not actual). So, yes, the bandwidth siphoned off to passers-by is coming right off what you can no longer used for yourself. Which is why, I closed my wireless network - I have no issue sharing with my neighbours, but some were taking the piss and using all my bandwidth. I didn't have the patience to work out who or deploy QoS
@stizzleswick
they purchased a package that as part of the service included a public wifi facility or whatever, which if the bill payer wanted could be disabled. They subscribed to a complete package that included that facility. Its like buying a car that includes see through windows and the salesman offering to tint the windows any time you want and then complaining that the windows are not tinted. Any normal person would just accept the offer to free of charge rectify the issue.
"Any normal person would just accept the offer to free of charge rectify the issue."
Sorry to burst your bubble, but they already talked to a laywer. Now they have a leach to feed, this is going to go through the worst and most expensive of all possible paths before resolution. A favourite saying of mine is that "there is no problem, no matter how twisted and unresolvable it may seem, that you can't get a couple of lawyers into a room together and make it a whole lot worse."
We need an "I'm a lawyer and I'm here to help you" icon.
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Sorry to p*ss all over that comment of yours but it lacks a fundamental mis-understand of two key points here.
1) Electronic devices consume varying levels of power depending on load. If you use your Wi-Fi rarely, it is consuming less power than if it's at full load because a load of random strangers are using it 24 hours a day.
2) It doesn't matter if they're not charging you for bandwidth, the total possible bandwidth is limited, if your connection can do 20Mbps (for example) and the open hotspot users are taking up, lets say 15Mbps, you end up getting only 5Mpbs throughput of the 20 you're paying for.
That's not to mention the fact that you have an open network on a piece of hardware you have little access to or understanding of at a low level as a vector for attack for anyone that fancies attempting to gain entry, or merely deny service, while all the time you think you're safely logging in to your internet banking or streaming the WiFi cam of your sleeping child.
tl;dr: Yes, it will take more power, and yes it will use your bandwidth.
Thing with what they claim burdens their electricity, that is a stretch since the router is already there using power for your home wifi anyway, the open doesn't incur anymore power then if its off.
I'm no expert in the matter, but I would imagine a router broadcasting and receiving wireless signals at a strength required to penetrate walls and provide a reliable connection to someone outside your home would draw more power than one not doing this. What with the inverse-square law and all that, I would be very surprised if it didn't work in the same way as your mobile phone does, which broadcasts a stronger signal when the mast signal is weaker.
Also, I don't see how anyone could argue that it doesn't degrade the bandwidth. Given that bandwidth is finite (lets call it a), and some of it is being used (lets call that b), a - b < a if b > 0.
Except that most home users will never come anywhere near using their 20 MB of bandwidth during normal use. More like < 1 MB on average, unless you are downloading porn files 24 /7. Check the bandwidth meter on your router if you know where to find it.
The arguments about power consumption are equally ridiculous, spineless and stupid. This is not a washer/dryer, it is a home router, for f*ks sake. Can't wait to see what a ComCast engineer or legal expert does with that argument in court. Maybe they will offer 2 cents in damages.
Personally, I think the whole thing is silly and just shows what is wrong with US tort law, big time, and its obsession with sueballs.
I don't like COMCAST either, but sharing WiFi amongst fellow home users is a great idea.
Particularly, if you are moving about and need wifi in a strange city.
As I recall, on my own router, external public users are throttled to 15 % of available bandwidth. And yes, they do have to login with their subscriber user name and password.
Full disclosure, I live in an isolated country village, not an apartment block or city. Consequently, I do not have public wifi enabled on my home router. There is no one within range to use the hotspot and I don't particularly want to attract war drivers or walkers. If someone must have an internet connection for life or death reasons, they can knock on my door.
As long as that public wifi disabling option is available to the subscriber, I really don't see where the problem is. It is a nice feature for customers. If lived in a crowded area, I would probably enable it and encourage others to do the same.
But it's much easier to be a mean git and just sue a big company, isn't it? Never mind the facts. They will probably argue it is a menace to public security or some other bullshit, just to make it entertaining.
She's a paralegal. I suspect one of her fellow professional, ambulance-chasing parasites told her it would be a great idea to sue and that (s)he would take the case on contingency.
America, land of the free and the selfish......... I honestly hope they lose and get smacked with a countersuit or whatever it is lawyers do to each other in these circumstances. Then they can clog up the courts a little longer while others wait in jail for their day in court.
Not charged possibly... However how do they handle your bandwidth allocation?
If I had 2mbs and strangers wandering past were using some of it I would be aggrieved.
Or do they sell you 2mbs, actually wire in 4mbs, and that extra 2 is solely for the public wifi.
Hopefully the subscribers could then multiplex it.
Usually, talking about cable, the potential bandwidth is larger than the bandwidth provisioned to your account. The bandwidth for these free wifi hotspots are usually provisioned separately from the bandwidth of your account.
So apart from potential increased congestion in the local area, or signal problems degrading the available total bandwidth, these free hotspots do not have any impact on the bandwidth of the subscriber.
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In the US (and especially with cable companies, which is what Comcast are) you are not charged for bandwidth. They sell you a, say, 50 MB package and then deliver a small fraction of that, because they are evil and corrupt. For instance, I pay for a 50 MB connection and the best I ever get is 25-30, and on Friday nights when all my neighbours are trying to stream Netflix, I struggle to get 1-2 MB.
So Comcast are selling her a package, almost certainly delivering much less than that, and then siphoning off even more bandwidth to sell to passers-by.
They are evil bastards
"Bandwidth well, you are not charged for any bandwidth used by the open wifi as that is separate."
Sorry, I neither beleive nor find that practice to be ethical. As a subscriber I pay "X" per month with the expection I will be able to connect with a certain amount of bandwidth. The amount of bandwidth that a SoHo router/ap can process is fininte as is the frequency of any wireless signal they are broadcasting. IE, wireless is not compartmentalized like a true switched environment, and even if they are broadcasting a seperate ssid that's supposedly isolated from from the network I access, unless they have multiple frequency transceivers in those modems, which I doubt because because they are so notoriously cheap, so I am fighting for the bandwidth on the network that's broadcasting inside my home. Furthermore, who's to say this won't be abused by non-comcast subscribers who get account info from a friend?
Not only would I rip their equipment out of my home and replace it with something I've purchased, but they would get it back as I throw its pieces out the window of my car as I'm driving by their office.
And I'm sorry, cellular providers pay the property owners to lease the small plot of land their towers take up. The same rules of engagement should apply to the wireless network that's accessible from inside my house. I'm already paying an obscene amount for their services, at the very least they should off set it should I decide to OPT IN. I should not have to opt out to have my network unhijacked.
Finally, I will conceed that they own the public facing address of any broad band modem, but anything that originates from my modem, whether it be 10.x.x.x, 172.x.x.x or 192.168.x.x is mine. period.
...My Techicolor TC8305C router is an 802.11n (single band Wi-Fi 802.11n - 2.4GHz 3x3 with optional 200mW high power) but, if you have the TC8717 (dual band concurrent high power Wi-Fi - 802.11n 2.4GHz and 802.11ac 5GHz 3x3) then your bandwidth dilution will be minimal. I TOTALLY agree with you though, because its like being raped in your sleep and then finding out about it later-- you were still violated (but you apparently agreed to being raped, in your sleep, when you signed the disclaimer).
Maybe they have already applied an appropriate discount?
"And I'm sorry, cellular providers pay the property owners to lease the small plot of land their towers take up. The same rules of engagement should apply to the wireless network that's accessible from inside my house. I'm already paying an obscene amount for their services, at the very least they should off set it should I decide to OPT IN. I should not have to opt out to have my network unhijacked."
You as a customer can opt out of it and not have it.
Well, yes and no. You "opt out" by returning their updated cable modem. So what do you use for a cable modem, then? You can use your old one...until they disable it. Or, you can go out and buy a cable modem of your own (about $60).
That's been my experience with Comcast (I opted for the 3rd option). YMMV.
The AUDACITY. Opt out!? Why are you are defending Com-corrupt? If you knew anything about the company or electrical engineering, you would appreciate you've just stepped into a pile of goo Boo-Boo. Com-poster QoS prioritizes their public WiFi over the paying customer, squats on private equipment stealing others juice, exposes private network to potential DoS when flooded with public utilization and quack hackers who jam up perfectly good folks for a grin. Dumb stuff.
Bandwidth well, you are not charged for any bandwidth used by the open wifi as that is separate.
Bandwidth in this context, as most on El Reg will be aware, is in reference to how much data the line can handle at any given moment. If you'll forgive the 'superhighway' analogy, think of your bandwidth as a four lane highway for data to travel, with each packet of data being a car. Then, when someone else gets on, you only have two lanes available for your own traffic. Therefore it takes longer for your data to get fully transferred.
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Hope they win too, not because of the probably unfounded bandwidth and electricity burden. The only argument that should be needed is that running a public access point in their own home without permission is simply not on. And they can tell Comcast to bugger off without needing a valid reason.
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My router does that too, I don't see a problem.
It probably draws some extra power when someone connects to it. In the order of the power consumption of one of the bulbs in the Xmas lighting that the pair probably have all over the house.
It doesn't impact my bandwidth in any significant way (QoS does work, it would seem).
In fact it's so negligible that I actually installed a second "open" spot using Fon. That way, on the move I can benefit from my ISP's hotspots AND Fon's ones, should one of the networks not be available in the area.
Does anyone want to bet that Comcast is able to determine it came from the public hotspot instead of the homeowner? If they can tell that, there's the out for the homeowner to use the public hotspot instead of their private wifi to download illegal content, send email to ISIS asking for a membership application, etc.
RTFM " that can be used by nearby subscribers"
Since the free "public" wifi is for subscribers, that strongly suggests that you need to use your Comcast subscriber ID details to connect, so they know who you are and where you connect.
"So if you're passing by a fellow user's home, you can lock onto their public Wi-Fi, log in using your Comcast username and password, and use that home's bandwidth."
I suppose that handles my concern too, but the people who send out black helicopters may not understand the distinction between username and IP address. This 'feature' doesn't seem to work on my own-bought wireless router/modem.
suppose that handles my concern too, but the people who send out black helicopters may not understand the distinction between username and IP address. This 'feature' doesn't seem to work on my own-bought wireless router/modem.
O...K. In for some explaining: these routers broadcast 2 different networks, with different APs, and different IP spaces. One is yours to fiddle with, you can encrypt to your heart's content and it takes precedence in the case of a bandwidth limitation. The other is managed directly by your ISP, is open to all connections but requires a webpage-based login (using credentials valid with the ISP). It also only uses "leftover" bandwidth, for which you are, quite obviously, not charged.
Whether you like the idea or not, it doesn't draw any significant power (I would estimate in the milliwatt range) and should not impact your traffic speed.
It is also operated directly by the network operator (here, the ISP) and thus completely unrelated to your account AND your IP, no black helicopters for you.
In some cases (e.g. Fon), non-subscribers can connect on a pay-per-minute basis, and the hotspot "owner" can choose to receive some of that money (as for me I didn't bother giving my Paypal ID to receive what amounts to pennies; still would pay more than the added 'leccy bill though).
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