[Cryptography] Creepy correlation noted

[Tom Mitchell]

On Thu, Jul 13, 2017 at 7:46 AM, John Levine <johnl at iecc.com> wrote:
> In article <E1dVRn8-0007Xe-P9 at elasmtp-masked.atl.sa.earthlink.net> you write:
>>So unless someone across the street is reporting my presence in real
>>time, I'm pretty sure that my ISP is the culprit.
>
> How would they even know what your phone number is?

Comcrass has a VOIP service they sell so they do know and control  that number.
Their box has a  plug that a common phone can plug into.
They now have a battery (too expensive) for the emergency functionality.
Emergency 911 requires a precise knock on that door physical location.

It is tempting to ponder how to snoop the cable side of their box and
see what the box connects to without customer demand. There are so
many channels that it would take an interesting device to learn very
much.   The cable modems do make a lot of traffic visible but since
cable distribution has a crazy amount of of bandwidth and only a small
subset is visible.  Channel bonding games and modem firmware updates
make snooping locally less than possible for the most part (mostly
good).

These multiple function boxes - voice, WiFi, firewall, router, DHCP
server, guest Wifi, public XfinityWiFi...  all have a public side
management side that is invisible and  invisibly managed apart from
the customer.   They present an interesting set of risks.






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