Could people see who are connected to their WIFI connections and what they access?

Question

Could people see who are connected to their WIFI connections, for instance a home broadband system on your home desktop and using your laptop would it be able to pick up who are connected to the network and what they are doing?? URGENT!

Answer 1

William and John P's answers are technically correct.



While Obama himself may not be monitoring, it is possible (maybe not legal in most cases) that your network could be monitored. See the link below on the Carnivore project (and I'm sure there are other packet monitoring applications with more advanced capabilities).



As for seeing "who" is connected, routers generally have the ability to log the MAC address for the network interface. This won't necessarily reveal the "person", but does uniquely identify the device (although be aware the "spoofing" is possible). Through other tools, you could potentially identify the person if they transmit personal information.



I'd guess that most people rarely monitor their wireless configurations (unless they are computer geeks, in which case they tend to secure them anyways). If problems are detected on a wireless network, then you may see some diagnostics that could work to identify people (devices) connected.

Answer 2

Well,, See

if the owner of the wifi device set some options about monitoring tools, and with this monitoring ,,, and some filters he can know which PC/User access.... whatever...



also without monitoring tool,,, when you just got a connection, there is a service called DHCP, DHCP assign IP to each PC/User.

Answer 3

Yes, If your neighbor logs onto their router they can see who is connected.

Yes, If you are on your neighbors internet and they are running a protocol analyzer program like Wireshark, they can see what websites you go to etc.



99% of people won't do either of those though.

Answer 4

yes.. everyone is watching, even Obama.