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New Comcast feature (for Greg)
On Fri, 22 Nov 2013 02:23:46 -0500, "Mr. Luddite" wrote:
On 11/22/2013 12:22 AM, wrote: On Thu, 21 Nov 2013 21:38:21 -0500, "Mr. Luddite" wrote: If your device (computer, smart phone, iPad or whatever) detects a "XFINITYWiFi" signal as an available network, you connect to it. The more I think about this the scarier it gets. What happens when that "XFINITYWiFi" router you see is a spoofer, they play you like a real Xfinity site, get your password and along the way they also dump your device to their machine. I hope there is more security than you have described. They are even talking about phony "charging stations" that will dump your mobile device while you think you are just getting a free charge. If you want to learn more about this, here's a link that will get you started. The link was huge, so I made a TinyURL: http://tinyurl.com/kr2rtp2 Sounds like someone is letting 'conspiracy theories' get into his head. But, Greg makes a good point. John H. -- Hope you're having a great day! |
New Comcast feature
On Friday, 22 November 2013 07:15:59 UTC-4, KC wrote:
Watch out Greg.... Dick will get on his stump and start calling you names now. Oh wait, you are in the right social economic class, so you will probably be just fine... nevermind... I have a sneaking suspicion he doesn't play well with lower middle class:) Wow.. what a little drama queen you are! You are as regular as a woman's monthly cycle. We see you back in your 'poor little me... everyone's picking on me' phase. Someone should test you to see if your estrogen levels are higher than your testosterone levels. ~~SNERK~~ |
New Comcast feature (for Greg)
On 11/22/2013 12:43 PM, wrote:
On Fri, 22 Nov 2013 02:23:46 -0500, "Mr. Luddite" wrote: On 11/22/2013 12:22 AM, wrote: On Thu, 21 Nov 2013 21:38:21 -0500, "Mr. Luddite" wrote: If your device (computer, smart phone, iPad or whatever) detects a "XFINITYWiFi" signal as an available network, you connect to it. The more I think about this the scarier it gets. What happens when that "XFINITYWiFi" router you see is a spoofer, they play you like a real Xfinity site, get your password and along the way they also dump your device to their machine. I hope there is more security than you have described. They are even talking about phony "charging stations" that will dump your mobile device while you think you are just getting a free charge. If you want to learn more about this, here's a link that will get you started. The link was huge, so I made a TinyURL: http://tinyurl.com/kr2rtp2 The big flaw in this for me is your guests need to be Comcast customers. I do see why they are doing it tho. Comcast is so bad here, I don't really know many people who have it. My wife has it at work, simply because they do cable for the neighborhood. They are seriously looking for another data service. The TVs in the club house are already on Direct TV, mostly for the sports package. I think the data in the clubhouse is free right now because they don't want to use the business and they have DSL knocking on the door. Until very recently Comcast up here was getting terrible as well, both in cable TV and Internet service. Lots of outages on the Internet connection and weak or no signals for cable TV on many channels. Then they did the upgrades. The Comcast tech who came to the house told me that Comcast is slowly upgrading their entire system, nationwide and also the provided gear to customers. Eventually everyone will be upgraded to the type of gear he installed at our house. Since then, the services have been excellent. Faster and stable Internet and much improved HD TV signal. So, maybe there's hope in the future down there. |
New Comcast feature
On Fri, 22 Nov 2013 07:55:54 -0800 (PST), True North wrote:
On Friday, 22 November 2013 07:15:59 UTC-4, KC wrote: Watch out Greg.... Dick will get on his stump and start calling you names now. Oh wait, you are in the right social economic class, so you will probably be just fine... nevermind... I have a sneaking suspicion he doesn't play well with lower middle class:) Wow.. what a little drama queen you are! You are as regular as a woman's monthly cycle. We see you back in your 'poor little me... everyone's picking on me' phase. Someone should test you to see if your estrogen levels are higher than your testosterone levels. ~~SNERK~~ Hey Squirt! No gonads yet, hey? Had *your* estrogen levels checked lately? Sharia, Mexican, or what, hey? John H. -- Hope you're having a great day! |
New Comcast feature
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New Comcast feature
On 11/23/2013 12:31 PM, BAR wrote:
In article , says... Comcast just enabled a new feature on our home wifi system. You have to have the new, updated equipment and modem/router that is provided by them for it to work. What they do is enable your wifi router to transmit and receive another independent signal. It shows up as "XFINITYWiFi" on your computer available networks list, iPad or cell phone. It is unsecured and doesn't interfere with your existing, secured connection, nor does it slow anything down. Anyone signed onto it is *not* connected to your existing, secured network, so they can't access any file sharing or anything you have set up on your network. It's designed to allow guests, visitors or anyone within receiving range of the signal to access the Internet and email virtually anywhere as long as you are a Comcast customer. It means that once they upgrade everyone, you could drive down the street and access the Internet anywhere there is a home WiFi system provided by Comcast. That's a lot of free "hot spots" in our area since Comcast dominates the cable TV and Internet market in our area. In our case nobody driving on the road will benefit from our house because we are too far from the road for them to get the signal. But in most areas with houses close to the road, you should be able to access the internet everywhere. It can also be used by house guests and visitors as long as they have a Comcast account. When you first connect to it, it doesn't indicate that you have Internet access. Says "local only". But, if you open a browser, it takes you to a Comcast page where you enter your user name (or Comcast email address) and your password. You only have to do this once per device. Once you've done that, you have full access to the Internet. You can also request that this capability be disabled on your modem/router if you don't want it. Personally, I think it's pretty cool and a clever way to make Internet access available to Comcast account holders almost everywhere. Funny, not too long ago it was a big deal to be "stealing" someone else's WiFi connection. Now they are encouraging it. Why would you want to expose your internet connection to anyone and everyone within range. When the government comes to you and says where were you doing illegal operations from your internet connection what are you going to say? That was one of the concerns that I had ... and Greg also raised it as a potential issue. However, it's not a problem or risk. The "second channel" that is broadcast is totally independent of the primary secured, home network channel. It's really a Comcast owned and controlled connection and has nothing to do with your home network. I confirmed, both with Comcast and on my computer that the IP addresses are different. I checked our reported IP address on the primary, secured network, then disconnected from it, connected to the second "XFINITYWiFi" signal and it reported a totally different IP. I think there is a lot of confusion about this, as I was initially when I received the email from Comcast announcing and explaining this new feature/service. Again, people are *not* able to sign onto your home network and it isn't "exposed". The purpose of the Comcast/Xfinity owned and controlled signal is to eventually make your whole area, town and state an Xfinity "hotspot". You can opt out of having your home router having the second channel capability. At first I was inclined to do that because I really didn't understand what it was for but now that I do, I'll leave it. There's no security risk to the regular connection. It is also only accessible to Comcast customers. If you don't have a Comcast account, you can't use it. |
New Comcast feature
On 11/23/2013 12:31 PM, BAR wrote:
Why would you want to expose your internet connection to anyone and everyone within range. When the government comes to you and says where were you doing illegal operations from your internet connection what are you going to say? Forgot to mention in my previous reply: In our particular case, there's another reason I am not concerned about this feature. Our house is way too far from the road (950 feet) for anyone just passing by to receive the signal. The closest neighbor has Verizon Fios as a Internet service, and they are too far away from our house to get a usable signal from our router. Even if they managed to get the signal, they wouldn't be able to connect because they don't have a Comcast account. Our primary network in the house was "unsecured" for years because there isn't anybody else close enough to use it. It's secured now by default with the new modem/router which requires it to be WPS2 secured. |
New Comcast feature
On 11/23/13, 12:48 PM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 11/23/2013 12:31 PM, BAR wrote: In article , says... Comcast just enabled a new feature on our home wifi system. You have to have the new, updated equipment and modem/router that is provided by them for it to work. What they do is enable your wifi router to transmit and receive another independent signal. It shows up as "XFINITYWiFi" on your computer available networks list, iPad or cell phone. It is unsecured and doesn't interfere with your existing, secured connection, nor does it slow anything down. Anyone signed onto it is *not* connected to your existing, secured network, so they can't access any file sharing or anything you have set up on your network. It's designed to allow guests, visitors or anyone within receiving range of the signal to access the Internet and email virtually anywhere as long as you are a Comcast customer. It means that once they upgrade everyone, you could drive down the street and access the Internet anywhere there is a home WiFi system provided by Comcast. That's a lot of free "hot spots" in our area since Comcast dominates the cable TV and Internet market in our area. In our case nobody driving on the road will benefit from our house because we are too far from the road for them to get the signal. But in most areas with houses close to the road, you should be able to access the internet everywhere. It can also be used by house guests and visitors as long as they have a Comcast account. When you first connect to it, it doesn't indicate that you have Internet access. Says "local only". But, if you open a browser, it takes you to a Comcast page where you enter your user name (or Comcast email address) and your password. You only have to do this once per device. Once you've done that, you have full access to the Internet. You can also request that this capability be disabled on your modem/router if you don't want it. Personally, I think it's pretty cool and a clever way to make Internet access available to Comcast account holders almost everywhere. Funny, not too long ago it was a big deal to be "stealing" someone else's WiFi connection. Now they are encouraging it. Why would you want to expose your internet connection to anyone and everyone within range. When the government comes to you and says where were you doing illegal operations from your internet connection what are you going to say? That was one of the concerns that I had ... and Greg also raised it as a potential issue. However, it's not a problem or risk. The "second channel" that is broadcast is totally independent of the primary secured, home network channel. It's really a Comcast owned and controlled connection and has nothing to do with your home network. I confirmed, both with Comcast and on my computer that the IP addresses are different. I checked our reported IP address on the primary, secured network, then disconnected from it, connected to the second "XFINITYWiFi" signal and it reported a totally different IP. I think there is a lot of confusion about this, as I was initially when I received the email from Comcast announcing and explaining this new feature/service. Again, people are *not* able to sign onto your home network and it isn't "exposed". The purpose of the Comcast/Xfinity owned and controlled signal is to eventually make your whole area, town and state an Xfinity "hotspot". You can opt out of having your home router having the second channel capability. At first I was inclined to do that because I really didn't understand what it was for but now that I do, I'll leave it. There's no security risk to the regular connection. It is also only accessible to Comcast customers. If you don't have a Comcast account, you can't use it. When my cable modem went teats up, I returned it to Comcast and got a new one that is significantly faster than the old one. I was offered a combo modem/router, seemed decent enough, but it only had a couple of ports for wired connections, and I already had a good wired/wireless router with the G and N bands and more ports for wired connections. -- Religion: together we can find the cure. |
New Comcast feature
On 11/23/13, 12:56 PM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 11/23/2013 12:31 PM, BAR wrote: Why would you want to expose your internet connection to anyone and everyone within range. When the government comes to you and says where were you doing illegal operations from your internet connection what are you going to say? Forgot to mention in my previous reply: In our particular case, there's another reason I am not concerned about this feature. Our house is way too far from the road (950 feet) for anyone just passing by to receive the signal. The closest neighbor has Verizon Fios as a Internet service, and they are too far away from our house to get a usable signal from our router. Even if they managed to get the signal, they wouldn't be able to connect because they don't have a Comcast account. Our primary network in the house was "unsecured" for years because there isn't anybody else close enough to use it. It's secured now by default with the new modem/router which requires it to be WPS2 secured. And of course you are not "doing illegal operations from your internet connection." I wonder what the actual range is for the "outside" wi-fi connection. Traditional wi-fi typically is good within a reasonably sized house and maybe out on the porch or patio and maybe out onto a street 100' away. -- Religion: together we can find the cure. |
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