Ironically, a tin foil hat would probably work to prevent that kind of surveillance
this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2025
434 points (98.4% liked)
Technology
73209 readers
4518 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- 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.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
434
Humans can be tracked with unique 'fingerprint' based on how their bodies block Wi-Fi signals
(www.theregister.com)
A faraday hat.
wouldn’t that make it worse? basically any signal can bounce off you, making yourself even easier to track.
edit: wording
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
So wear many different hats. Got it.
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!
Yeah, wouldn't want to have to change hats, when I go to the swinger club after church.
Many different items of tinfoil clothing. Tinfoil shirt today, tinfoil codpiece for the weekend
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Chuck vindicated. What a chicanery.
That's a very unique fingerprint he's got.
"Hey boss come look. This microwave is walking around again"
I've seen some article recently that the patterns of Wi-Fi/Bluetooth (don't remember which one) interference with brainwaves can be scanned to reconstruct brainwave signature remotely, meaning that it might be possible to scan anyone's EEG from Wi-Fi/Bluetooth distance. And there are some AI advancements for reconstructing inner monologue from EEG. So maybe we're not so far from actual remote mind-reading.
You had non work related thoughts on three separate occasions last week. Please report to HR for attitude adjustment.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Great, another dystopian way for authorities to observe me on the shitter
Your poo time has expired and your pay is docked. Flushing will cost 50 dollars for the next week. Get back to work
Please drink a verification laxative?
accurate matches up to 95.5% of the time
and they’re more privacy-preserving than visual images
Oh fuck all the way off.
My thought exactly. Their definition of privacy is... interesting
When anyone or anything says that their product works "up to x%" I always presume it doesn't really work at all.
Christ, 1% is included in that "up to 95.5%" vague bullshit statement.
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Why would someone research something like this? God damn, like use your life for good, homie
I can imagine this being initially an accidental discovery like oh every time so and so’s body interacts with the WiFi signal it’s the same pattern… until someone starts exploring this further… and then some engineer or their manager started looking for applications for this. In my experience engineering researchers especially are very good with coming up with use cases for whatever tech they’re working with, with little ethical consideration.
I doubt it. You'd need to be looking really closely at the waveforms to notice this, so they were likely already doing something similar, like that research that can pinpoint where people are in a house based on their WiFi. They were probably already doing something creepy before they noticed that this was more straightforward than they expected.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Well I heard about this and thought "this will be great for home automation", but I also know that someone was equally excited about using this to rob people of basic freedoms or being a fucking creep or both.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Everything is incremental progress in some way.
I remember years back someone doing experiments with Wi-Fi to see if a room was occupied based on signal attenuation.
This just looks like an extension of that.
Not everything is a giant leap
load more comments
(1 replies)
Incorrect bio-signature detected, drink verification can to continue your content.
load more comments
(1 replies)
they're more privacy-preserving than visual images.
hhhhwat. How can they identify you and also be privacy preserving? 🤔
It's all AI. You should not worry about it. In fact you should not think about it. All is going to be fine.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(10 replies)
Neat. Good luck protecting yourself from this.
On the other hand, I’m seriously considering opening an Etsy shop selling foil-lined clothes. I’m pretty good at sewing. What do you think?
Then I'll look for the person with the fingerprint of foil-lined clothes
Not if everyone buys it, because then we'd all look the same
load more comments
(6 replies)
Someone’s going to use this to drop missiles on “baddies” with their sleeping families in 3 2 1
So, you're saying the tin foil hat people were right all along?!
Ironically, they're still wrong, because even in their wildest conspiracies, they didn't imagine Wi-Fi could be used to "take pictures" of a sort.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Let me know when I can selfhost LibreFi Security on my router and use it for myself. Sounds great for private home use.
load more comments
(2 replies)
95.5% accuracy is abysmal for any use case these people want to use it for
Stilsuits: get it for the unbearable heat as we turn the Earth into a desert, now with wifi blocking!
view more: next ›