Comcast sued for turning home routers into public Wi-Fi

Last July, we learned that Comcast was blanketing the country with at least five million Wi-Fi transmitters situated within home routers. It enabled anyone within range, and with a Comcast Internet account, to log on just using their password.

The only problem was that Comcast never informed or consulted the owners of the home routers.

Last week, though, lawyers in the Bay Area initiated a class-action suit in U.S. District Court in San Francisco against Comcast. The suit was filed on behalf of Toyer Grear and daughter Joycelyn Harris of Pittsburgh, California who state that the company is “exploiting them for profit. ”

Comcast claims  subscribers can disable the public section of the router, but the suit says that in most cases Comcast acts without consent and thereby puts “the costs of its national Wi-Fi network onto its customers.”

Comcast expanding Wi-Fi hotspots using home routers (Speed Matters, Jul. 25, 2014)

Comcast sued for turning home Wi-Fi routers into public hotspots (SFGate, Dec. 9, 2014)