Every article (and post on this website) I find on public Wi-Fi safety is mostly concerned with other people connected to the same network snooping on our communications. As far as I understand it, we’re mostly secure as long as we’re connecting through HTTPS. “Mostly” because there could be flaws in the encryption software or the bad actor could redirect us to a fake page.
But what about the provider? I sometimes connect to free Wi-Fi hotspots (bus, hospital) that require me to accept an agreement before connecting. Sometimes that agreement says they can monitor my communications.
So, assuming I connect to such a Wi-Fi network and only do HTTPS-related connections, could they:
- Snoop on those communications in any way.
- If not, what can they actually know (I assume just know the host I’m connecting to, but not the content of the communication).
- Do some trickery like intercepting the HTTPS request, send it to the server as me, get the response and send it back to me.
- Other.