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I believe we use WPA or WPA2 encryption.

To what extent can another user monitor my traffic?

  • Monitor my desktop activity?

  • View documents I've saved on my computer?

  • Tell what sites i visit?

  • Tell what my passwords / logins / email addresses are?

Is there any way I can tell if I'm being monitored? If so, how can I stop it?

Jeff Ferland
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user12455
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    See [How can I keep a roommate from seeing my web activity?](http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/2613/how-can-i-keep-a-roommate-from-seeing-my-web-activity) – Jeff Ferland Aug 24 '12 at 20:36
  • How do you read email: which protocol(s)? How do you access sensitive websites: do you go to the HTTPS URL directly? etc. – curiousguy Aug 25 '12 at 03:20
  • "_I believe we use WPA or WPA2 encryption._" You "believe"? How do you access the network? – curiousguy Aug 25 '12 at 03:27

2 Answers2

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You can be monitored when you are on the same wifi network and the other person uses a wifi antenna that is in promiscuous mode. He can only see what traffic you are sending over the wifi network. If you are sending your journal over the internet without using HTTPS, he will be able to see them.

Your internet can be actively monitored, at least where you are going. There are countermeasures like using an encrypted VPN or SOCKS proxy.

Again for your passwords, if you are visiting the site in HTTP rather than in HTTPS, than anyone that has access to a point between you and the webserver will be able to see your credentials.

Solutions:

  • get your own wifi
  • invest in an encrypted vpn
  • invest in a SOCKS proxy server
  • Use HTTPS

P.S. This is the same for Mac and PC.

Lucas Kauffman
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  • thanks very much. your response is appreciated. afterthought: are there inherent security benefits in IE or Firefox in nmy situation? – user12455 Aug 24 '12 at 20:02
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    use FireFox with [HTTPS Anywhere](https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere) which will force the browser to use a secure connection whenever possible. – Celeritas Aug 24 '12 at 21:16
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    @user12455 There are "security benefits" in using HTTPS instead of HTTP, IMAP/S (IMAP over TLS) instead of plain, clear-text IMAP, POP/S (POP3 over TLS) instead of plain, clear-text POP3, etc. (Note that in usual conversations, TLS and SSL are synonyms, but they aren't exactly technically the same things. Lookup this site if you are interested.) – curiousguy Aug 25 '12 at 03:26
  • @Celeritas: **HTTPS Everywhere doesn't actually force the browser to use HTTPS wherever possible!** It uses a built-in whitelist of sites that can use it, and doesn't do anything to sites that aren't on that whitelist. – SilverWolf Apr 20 '18 at 14:52
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Your question is very broad. Keep in mind that not everything on your computer is transmitted via wifi.

Monitor my desktop activity?

View documents I've saved on my computer?

Tell what sites i visit?

These aren't exactly functions of having wireless internet. I mean if you save a document to your local hard drive it would never be on the internet (or any network for that matter) so wifi is out of the picture.

Tell what my passwords / logins / email addresses are?

This has more to do with wifi. You want to make sure the channel you use to connect to your wireless access point (e.g. router) is secure so that others in the area can't snoop what's being transmitted.

To find out if your being monitored could be lengthy proccess since there's so may ways to monitor someone. Do you have guesses where to start looking? e.g. on your computer itself or on the router.

Celeritas
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