this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2025
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Humans can be tracked with unique 'fingerprint' based on how their bodies block Wi-Fi signals (www.theregister.com)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by bignose@programming.dev to c/technology@lemmy.world
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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.

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[–] voodooattack@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

First of all: cardboard does NOT block electromagnetic waves. You need a Faraday Cage for that. And even then, it has to have holes of a certain size to block specific wavelengths/frequencies. It’s why you have a mesh on the door of your microwave for example.

Secondly: they’re not attempting to photograph you. Just identifying your unique signature once would allow them to track your location anywhere where they have the gear installed.

[–] leburb@sopuli.xyz 2 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

EDIT: I suppose your comment is written in a way that it's not clear whether you're saying certain frequencies absolutely require meshes of a certain size to be blocked or if you're just adding that extra detail about the design of Faraday cages for the hell of it. But...

Original comment: It doesn't have to have holes to block radiation. A continuous sheet blocks all frequencies. A mesh is just nice so we can see through the cage or allow air to pass etc.

From the page you linked: "A Faraday shield may be formed by a continuous covering of conductive material." "... if the conductor is thick enough and any holes are significantly smaller than the wavelength of the radiation."

[–] voodooattack@lemmy.world 3 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

My bad, a Farady Shield works just as well and it doesn’t need holes. But I was thinking about ways to combat this while posting and a solution involving conductive fabric was going through my head during that moment.