How fooling around with your Wi-Fi network could help you catch out a cheating partner

Our Wi-Fi routers might sometimes seem like they're just black boxes that don't do anything but power our home network, but many of them actually hide a lot of smarts.

A TikTok video pointing this out went viral this week, demonstrating how some Wi-Fi network systems actually let you keep track of stats and app usage.

The video came from user Abby Paige, and was a follow-up to another post she made about being suspicious when not knowing what someone's doing on her Wi-Fi.

The newer clip features her walking viewers through the process of using the Xfinity Wi-Fi app to check out what devices are connected to the network, and to see what they use when they are connected.

As Paige clarifies, this only works once you set it up, so you won't be able to find a device and then immediately scroll back through its history - but it's still a handy tip.

While this could just be used to give yourself a reality check over just how much time you spend with Instagram or TikTok open when you're at home, there are other smart ways to use the features.

For one thing, since it lets you see what apps each assigned user on the Wi-Fi network is using on their phone, in some cases, you could pretty easily check if dating apps like Tinder are still getting opened up.

So, if you think your partner is potentially dallying elsewhere, this might be a way to firm up your suspicions without going full 'invasion of privacy' and actually snooping on their phone.

This specific feature is called 'Manage People' on the Xfinity network, and the company clarified in a blog post that its usage tracking is very limited, so you won't get any more detail than seeing most-used apps (which might be reassuring to some of us).

Even if you have no concerns about your partner, there are loads of features in Xfinity's app, many of which are mirrored by competitors. These can let you time-gate apps to set a limit on how much they're used, for example.

That's great for parents, and it can even let you turn off the Wi-Fi capabilities of any connected devices case-by-case when you want to. This means you can easily schedule in time when the family games console can't play online, for example, and is another excellent way to get firmer in your scheduling of time online.