
Privacy concerns over “Circle with Disney” appliance - trashaccountxxx
Source: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;meetcircle.com&#x2F;circle&#x2F;tech-specs&#x2F;<p>I work in a small iot company. We usually do concurrency analysis. Yesterday we received Disney&#x27;s Circle box. It&#x27;s a device you connect to your wifi and lists all the devices in your network ; then you can monitor those devices, deny them access to websites and even access their browsing history.<p>While these features aren&#x27;t new, the fact that it&#x27;s a portable 3rd party device in your network puts it into a very higher level of wrong ethics :<p>1. It is claimed to be used in your own home, but nothing prevents you from connecting to your neighbors or workplace wifi and some public places too<p>2. As it&#x27;s using &quot;hacker techniques for good&quot;, there is NO action on the monitored device to do to enable or prevent monitoring, so you can browse history on your wife&#x27;s computer or your boss&#x27;s phone.<p>3. There&#x27;s even a battery embedded so you can carry it and monitor on the fly.<p>This device is intented to prevent your children from browsing porn or using facebook instead of studying ; especially at a time where snapchat and dickpics are a thing... BUT :<p>1. If gateway manufacturers were caring, they&#x27;d make similar features because 90% routers are built with OpenWRT which has the features. It would at least be really limited to your home.<p>2. How many scenarii could go wrong with that ? What if some child looks for his sex orientation and he doesn&#x27;t want to tell by fear of judgment? How many wife&#x2F;husband will buy it to spy on AshleyMadison visits? How many will use in work places for blackmailing?<p>3. Do you really think a child of today won&#x27;t find ways to reach the content your forbid? Ways are for people to bypass these rules, and still if not enough, that content is available on public wifi...<p>It for sure comes from good intentions ; but evil can be found in the best things.
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Tomsredwagon
The circle device must be within 10 feet of the router so it's impossible to
connect to your neighbors router (assuming your not in an extremely tight
apartment situation). You also can't walk into a coffeeshop or hotel lobby and
use it. Yes, you can monitor you children's internet activity but isn't that
what you should be doing? As far as an open wifi network; you always assume
that someone is monitoring your activity. Be security conscious and conduct
sensitive business through a VPN.

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trashaccountxxx
first, many people have this tight appartment situation. 10 ft is not
reasonable, and i really wonder how you can accurately measure that you're 10
ft away from the router, and not a repeater ; which brings me to the 2nd point
: yes you can connect to a coffeeshop : not all of them are equiped with open
networks + sign-in pages, because those require to pay for it and not all
shops can afford that. Last, you can still connect to your work place wifi,
can't you? More personally, assuming you share your life with someone, how
would you react if you were to discover such a device in your home?

...and NO, monitoring your kids isn't the answer since they can watch porn
from anywhere else than your monitored home. I guess something like education
should be better than repression?

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gergles
I'm more amazed they're selling ARP poisoning as a service and seem to have no
qualms about doing so.

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jhugg
I have young children. I’m not trying to prevent my kids from intentionally
seeking something objectionable on the internet; I’m trying to avoid them
accidentally finding things they’re not ready for (this happens).

It’s rather amazing how hard this is to accomplish without locking them down
so hard they’re using the net though a drinking straw.

