Turn off xfinitywifi

January 2017
Russ Cox

I wondered why I had a strong “xfinitywifi” network signal at home recently. Turns out the call was coming from inside my house.

The short version is that Comcast has decided to make all its customers' homes into hot spots to sell to its other customers and anyone else with a stolen credit card or a MAC address spoofer. See the Computerworld article below for details.

To disable this feature, the current settings page is https://customer.xfinity.com/WifiHotspot/, which will prompt for a comcast user login (check the lock, don't get phished, etc).

News Coverage

This is actually old news in that they started doing this a few years ago, but it only hit my home in the past few months. I'm not sure why. Maybe it has something to do with the new router they sent me a while back. These are some good articles explaining what is going on.

Computerworld, “Comcast XFINITY WiFi: Just say no”, June 2014.

Ars Technica, “Comcast sued by customers for turning routers into public hotspots”, December 2014.

CSO Online, “Comcast Xfinity Wi-Fi discloses customer names and addresses”, November 2015.