Privacy

31872 readers

452 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

Chat rooms

[Matrix/Element]Dead
Discord

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

(How) can a modem spy on you? (lemmings.world)

submitted 2 months ago by quantenzitrone@lemmings.world to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

15 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm planning to buy a router and modem and put OpenWrt on it for maximum control and privacy. While I could get a router with an integrated DSL modem, the previous tenants had cable internet so I'm not sure if the DSL connection even works and DSL internet is also more expensive (at least where I live). Fiber optic is not available. The problem is, there is apparently no open firmware for cable modems so I would have to buy a standalone router and a standalone cable modem. I would put OpenWrt on the router and use whatever proprietary firmware came with the modem.

So my question is:
Can a standalone modem that doesn't do routing, spy on you?
If yes a rough explanation how would be appreciated.

It seems that modem and router are used interchangeably on the internet (probably because they are mostly combined) so it is really hard to find any information on modems. Here are both Wikipedia articles for reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modem
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Router_(computing)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] umami_wasbi@lemmy.ml 12 points 2 months ago (2 children)

What you think the modem can spy on by whom? Certainly not the ISP I suppose. They can already do it without the modem.

[–] quantenzitrone@lemmings.world 1 points 2 months ago

The modem manufacturer might send traffic data to themselves. But the modem would need router capabilities for that, wouldn't it?

[–] TCB13@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

Yeah but at the same time you've ISPs that deploy routers that can initiate GRE tunnels between your network and their side for "support".