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If I am logged into a school WiFi and I airdrop a photo to someone can the school see what I airdrop? Or what I am searching using their WiFi?

Euphrasius von der Hummelwiese
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Angela1998
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  • Hi. Your answer about AirDrop is on the Wikipedia page of AirDrop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirDrop#Security_and_privacy Please ask another question or reformulate this one if you have trouble to understand the Wikipedia page. – A. Hersean Feb 28 '19 at 09:40
  • For your second question. It depends on the WiFi setup of your school. You should at least assume that they can know on which website you go. We cannot answer this question better without more information on your school's WiFi configuration. – A. Hersean Feb 28 '19 at 09:43

1 Answers1

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These are actually two different questions.

Airdrop

According to Apple, Airdrop transports the data directly from device to device end employs TLS-encryption for the transport. Therefore, nobody should be able to intercept the transferred data.

You should keep in mind though, that your legitimate recipient can forward the image to anybody or publish it! Think twice before you share sensitive data!

WiFi-Usage

When you are logged into the WiFi of your school, the school will be able to monitor all unencrypted connections you make. If you use HTTPS for browsing & searching, your school will not be able to tell what data was exchanged, however it will be able to tell, which host your device connected to. Also, the DNS traffic will be readable for your school, which will reveal which domain names your device tried to resolve.

Your school might also try to tamper with HTTPs by deploying a Proxy or trying to downgrade to HTTP in order to access your encrypted communication as well. If you have not accepted a school certificate authority, this should be easily detectable.

Euphrasius von der Hummelwiese
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  • The school can use a captive portal to identify the users. They can also use an intercepting proxy doing MITM on TLS connections, regenerating certificates with their CA or maybe droping HTTPS to revert to HTTP. – A. Hersean Feb 28 '19 at 09:48
  • Yes, this should not have impact on Airdrop, but on the WiFi-Part. I'll edit the correction. Thanks. – Euphrasius von der Hummelwiese Feb 28 '19 at 09:51