They are not harmful to health, but criminals can use them to monitor their targets.
For many years, it has been claimed—often without any basis—that Wi-Fi waves generated by internet routers are harmful to health, something that has been refuted on more than one occasion by the WHO (World Health Organisation). However, just because it is not harmful to the human body does not mean that it cannot pose a risk in other ways, such as the privacy of those who use it. Without going any further, a group of researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany) has discovered that there is a new method of espionage that uses Wi-Fi waves to compromise the security of the target.
The way it works is much simpler than it seems, as it turns out that when a person is in a Wi-Fi space, the waves spread around their body, and although we cannot see or feel them, it is possible to create images of them and then proceed to investigate their identity. The results do not lie: the study was conducted with 197 people and the identification rate was almost 100%.
German professor Thorsten Strufe explained that it does not matter whether the person is carrying a WLAN device or not; the presence of routers in the area is more than enough, and since virtually every place is covered by Wi-Fi, routers are likely to become the next ‘silent observation devices, because if you regularly visit a café with Wi-Fi, you could be identified later.’ Time will tell whether this form of espionage, which requires reconstructing the aforementioned images of the target using AI, will become a problem for society. Given the risk of this happening, Strufe says that the authorities should start to visualise this scenario in order to take the appropriate measures.
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