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Comcast/Xfinity does the same thing, but it can be turned off with a couple of clicks on the website. Check your account information on the website or do a search online. It's likely Spectrum offers the option to turn it off as well.
Comcast/Xfinity does the same thing, but it can be turned off with a couple of clicks on the website. Check your account information on the website or do a search online. It's likely Spectrum offers the option to turn it off as well.
Yes Spectrum does have that option to turn it off which I mentioned I did in the first post. I wasn't aware of it even being a feature until I was looking for another setting in my account. If it was truly meant for "guests" in the customer's home you would think they would tell the customer when it was installed. It wasn't mentioned to me.
If it was truly meant for "guests" in the customer's home you would think they would tell the customer when it was installed. It wasn't mentioned to me.
Yeah they must feel like they're pretty crafty, but they suck for deceiving customers with that. What it is really meant for is advertising on their website that they maintain a network of 250,000 hotspots:
Imagine if the option was disabled by default, and instead Spectrum asked all 250,000 customers if they wanted to opt in. Then how many hotspots would there be? And the icing on the cake, you have to pay Spectrum to rent that router, right?
It's segmented from the home owner. Essentially like your guest network. Keep in mind these are consumer products. The effort to go from one segment to another is probably no less than just attacking your wifi AP/router directly. Meaning you're not really increasing your exposure by having this feature. Especially if your wifi password is relatively weak. That would still be the bigger risk.
Performance impact is a different story. They say it has "minimal" effect. But at the end of the day - physics dictate that you are still using the same hardware to carry that information. So while it may not affect your bandwidth, if there are enough error or bad packet/frames sent by the guest - it can potentially affect the processor.
More info from Xfinity on how they provision their service -
I always tell friends/family to turn it off if they have/want to lease the hardware. But using your own hardware is always the first recommendation.
I live in an apartment building. During peak times the internet speed tests say the speed is the same, but I can see that it has clearly slowed down. If we left the hotspot on, and if others used it, I believe it could cause the same kind of noticeable slow down. I haven’t asked my neighbors what the effect is when I use the hotspot they left on.*
*Note that I didn’t intentionally do so. I often use one at a restaurant (xfinity).. Sometimes when I get home, my devices automatically connect to xfinity instead of my own network. I have to go in and tell my device not to connect automatically, but every once in a while it gets changed back to automatically connect. In those cases, I sometimes don’t notice until I try to print something, or airdrop something.
It's segmented from the home owner. Essentially like your guest network. Keep in mind these are consumer products. The effort to go from one segment to another is probably no less than just attacking your wifi AP/router directly. Meaning you're not really increasing your exposure by having this feature. Especially if your wifi password is relatively weak. That would still be the bigger risk.
Performance impact is a different story. They say it has "minimal" effect. But at the end of the day - physics dictate that you are still using the same hardware to carry that information. So while it may not affect your bandwidth, if there are enough error or bad packet/frames sent by the guest - it can potentially affect the processor.
More info from Xfinity on how they provision their service -
I always tell friends/family to turn it off if they have/want to lease the hardware. But using your own hardware is always the first recommendation.
Had a friend who was getting very bad service on Friday Evenings. Their house backed up to the local High School stadium and they were getting hammered by people in the stands. I suggested they get their own router. Problem solved.
I have AT&T fiber and a Verizon cell phone. At first I tried the AT&T router on its own, and the wifi was slow and intermittent.
Then I put the AT&T router in pass-through mode and installed my own Asus mesh router, and my wifi is now much faster and more reliable than with the AT&T router alone. I do let my phone connect through my wifi.
And then, the other day, I got a message from my new car saying it was connected to my wifi. What ??
I believe "sharing" should be by explicit permission of and by the customer. Default should be no sharing.
Yeah they must feel like they're pretty crafty, but they suck for deceiving customers with that. What it is really meant for is advertising on their website that they maintain a network of 250,000 hotspots:
Imagine if the option was disabled by default, and instead Spectrum asked all 250,000 customers if they wanted to opt in. Then how many hotspots would there be? And the icing on the cake, you have to pay Spectrum to rent that router, right?
I searched for hotspots near me and it pulled up a bunch of locations that look like private homes and were described as "Partner Out-Of-Home WiFi". My home did not show up maybe because I turned it off. I don't know how they get away with this practice without getting explicit consent. Maybe it's in some terms of service document that has too many pages to read. It's deceptive in describing this as being for guests in your home when clearly it is for Spectrum mobile customers having nothing to do with the home internet customer.
Now that I think about, there was a car that double parked in front of my home a couple of times last year for no apparent reason and stayed for about a half hour. There is no reason to double park here because it's only private homes and there are parking spots available. Maybe he was using my WiFi after finding it on the list of Spectrum hotspots.
Last edited by martinjsxx; 01-22-2024 at 01:43 PM..
I searched for hotspots near me and it pulled up a bunch of locations that look like private homes and were described as "Partner Out-Of-Home WiFi". My home did not show up maybe because I turned it off. I don't know how they get away with this practice without getting explicit consent. Maybe it's in some terms of service document that has too many pages to read. It's deceptive in describing this as being for guests in your home when clearly it is for Spectrum mobile customers having nothing to do with the home internet customer.
Now that I think about, there was a car that double parked in front of my home a couple of times last year for no apparent reason and stayed for about a half hour. There is no reason to double park here because it's only private homes and there are parking spots available. Maybe he was using my WiFi after finding it on the list of Spectrum hotspots.
They do get explicit permission. It is in all that fine print you agreed to.
They do get explicit permission. It is in all that fine print you agreed to.
Explicit means "stated clearly and in detail, leaving no room for confusion or doubt". If something is hidden in a 50 page document that they know almost no one will read then it is not stated clearly with no room for confusion. I don't think they even asked me explicitly to agree to terms of service but rather by using their service it is an implicit acceptance of their terms. I never signed anything with them nor do I remember checking a box in an online agreement that I accept their terms like software products make you do before installation.
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