[mik3y]

Thought this was going to be an mmWave sensor with an "AirBnB host friendly" UI of some sort.. turns out it's just a network sniffer? Seems.. defeatable.

    > How it Works
    > 
    > Party Squasher uses the presence of mobile phones
    > as a proxy for the presence of people.  You start by
    > connecting our small sensor to your property’s internet
    > router. [...]

[Domenic_S]

Sounds like it's an 802.11 monitor mode packet sniffer, recording probe requests (which have a MAC address associated with them). Connecting to the internet is probably just to hook up to their cloud service.

Defeatable by airplane mode/wifi off/phone off, sure.

[mdasen]

As you note, it would be defeatable by putting your phone into airplane mode. However, if you're having a party with 30 people, I doubt you'll be able to get a majority of them to turn off their phones. If the owner gets ping'd if there are more than 10 people, I think it'd be hard to get 20 out of 30 people to turn off their phones before entering the party. Even if they turn it off after arriving, the box might have already registered that the device was there. I think enough people would think "what's the harm" or "I don't want to miss texts from people" that it would be hard to get people to comply with turning off their phones.

[0_____0]

Phone off maybe. Android still uses Wifi when Wifi is turned off, as part of it's location tracking service. I loathe it. Btw if you toggle location off enough times, Android will eventually stop nagging you about it.

Let me use my device the way I want you f--- creeps!

[bb88]

I wonder if you could trigger false alarms at will. At what point would the owners stop responding?

[archerx]

Or just cover the box with aluminum foil and keep your phones on…