this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2025
513 points (98.5% liked)

Technology

73209 readers
4055 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
L4s@hackingne.ws
513
Humans can be tracked with unique 'fingerprint' based on how their bodies block Wi-Fi signals (www.theregister.com)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by bignose@programming.dev to c/technology@lemmy.world
121 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

The Sapienza computer scientists say Wi-Fi signals offer superior surveillance potential compared to cameras because they're not affected by light conditions, can penetrate walls and other obstacles, and they're more privacy-preserving than visual images.

[…] The Rome-based researchers who proposed WhoFi claim their technique makes accurate matches on the public NTU-Fi dataset up to 95.5 percent of the time when the deep neural network uses the transformer encoding architecture.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] besselj@lemmy.ca 153 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Ironically, a tin foil hat would probably work to prevent that kind of surveillance

[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 59 points 1 day ago

A faraday hat.

[–] hornedfiend@sopuli.xyz 25 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

wouldn’t that make it worse? basically any signal can bounce off you, making yourself even easier to track.

edit: wording

[–] besselj@lemmy.ca 36 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The tracking happens even with a big reflector/scatterer on your head, but as long as you dont wear it regularly, the system would have difficulty identifying you from wave propagation alone

[–] Flagstaff@programming.dev 30 points 1 day ago (2 children)

So wear many different hats. Got it.

[–] DasFaultier@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I mean, wouldn't you anyway? You don't wear your good Sunday tinfoil hat to work. That one's for church and swinger club visits only!

[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

Yeah, wouldn't want to have to change hats, when I go to the swinger club after church.

[–] Passerby6497@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Many different items of tinfoil clothing. Tinfoil shirt today, tinfoil codpiece for the weekend

[–] MadMadBunny@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Have you tried turning off the router?

[–] kerntucky@infosec.pub 9 points 1 day ago

Yeah, but then I had no excuse to wear a tinfoil codpiece.

[–] Capricorn_Geriatric@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago

Since it 'figerprints' you, changing your fingerprint by blocking parts of the signal with pieces of foil doesn't seem like a terrible idea.

Now, the question is: is such a tactic like wearing gloves, or like using super glue?