Wifi at work. What can they see?

ben501

We've got a wifi network at work that we can use but what information would the I.T. people be able to see when it's being used? Someone told me they could see the pages you've visited but can they see the page content aswell? Would they be able to see my login details if I logged in to here, or any other site, or is it just general browsing history?
And can they tell who it is?

boxst

If it is your work computer they can tell who it is from either login details or the MAC address of the wireless card. If it is your own computer and there are no login details required then they will not know who it is.

Depending on the products that they use, they can certainly track all web page URLs, they cannot 'see' the content if it is https as it is encrypted* and they generally wouldn't bother even with http.

*Not strictly true, but it requires tremendous effort to see it.

googler

Depends on the IT department, what equipment they have, what kind of WiFi access they've provided, and their policies on internet usage.

amcluesent

They could see everything, logins, emails etc. Even if using https, they could have a proxy server/firewall which decodes and re-encodes, a.k.a. 'man in the middle'. Some browsers will warn you about this.

muddyl

You could use a proxy website to view your pages, it hides what your viewing. Problem is most companies have it in their internet policy that they are forbidden, for exactly that reason.

agrinnall

Best to assume that they can see anything that you do, and to restrict your use to innocuous sites. I also wouldn't use online bankinging through their wifi.

googler

googler wrote: »

Depends on the IT department, what equipment they have, what kind of WiFi access they've provided, and their policies on internet usage.

...and on how many IT staff they have, and what number of those they dedicate to monitoring the staff's internet usage, in proportion to the number of staff, etc etc

tomtiddly

It all depends on your use of computers agreement and their IT policy but best assume they can see everything.

Where I am we could easily track all traffic for http pages and https will get decrypted and checked.

We're a school so there's a duty of care to the students, possibly giving us more control than elsewhere.

Generally we don't care what the staff are doing and would only check logs if it was raised from higher up i.e so and so has been caught mucking around on the internet instead of doing work.

Malicious pages, proxies etc are all blocked. Updating of what is blocked and categories etc is provided by the outside company.

Notmyrealname

ben501 wrote: »

We've got a wifi network at work that we can use but what information would the I.T. people be able to see when it's being used? Someone told me they could see the pages you've visited but can they see the page content aswell? Would they be able to see my login details if I logged in to here, or any other site, or is it just general browsing history?
And can they tell who it is?

They can do all of the above. Absolutely all traffic to and from your computer can be logged. They can tell from the IP address of the computer which one was used to request the pages and send/receive the traffic. They can then check who was logged on to that computer.

In short, if you've been violating company IT policy they CAN trace it to you.

ben501

Notmyrealname wrote: »

They can do all of the above. Absolutely all traffic to and from your computer can be logged. They can tell from the IP address of the computer which one was used to request the pages and send/receive the traffic. They can then check who was logged on to that computer.

In short, if you've been violating company IT policy they CAN trace it to you.

From potentially hundreds of people using laptops, mobiles, Ipads how could they know which one it was without physical inspecting every device in and around the premises?
I don't think many people use it the speeds pretty rubbish, or maybe lots of people use it and thats why its rubbish.

robmar0se

Most routers will log the MAC address that all NICS have so its not difficult to trace the user. Secondly most firms use a professional firewall that limits what can be and can't be done (if they don't, they probably aren't that sophisticated). Thirdly if the equipment is properly networked they may well have access to your machine anyway (either directly or via remote access?).