If you’re a Comcast customer, your WiFi is probably open to the whole neighborhood.

January 15, 2016 In The News Comments (0) 936

Comcast SUX VanI noticed something strange the last time I was home visiting my parents in the Philadelphia suburbs: They suddenly had a public wifi hotspot in their home. 

My parents’ house is far enough from public utilities and any neighbor houses that they often have difficulty just getting cellular service, so a public wifi network with a signal as strong as their home wifi seemed impossible.

But this was shortly after Comcast, their ISP, cable, and phone provider, forced my mother to switch out her modem and router (which I’d chosen and installed for her) for a new Comcast-owned 2-in-1 gateway. 

That part of the story is questionable enough. For years I had insisted they own their own equipment, both because it ensured better quality hardware and less tampering from Comcast and because they could avoid the nonsense monthly rental fee that meant they’d essentially be purchasing the crappy Comcast hardware anyway. Continue Reading

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