My new apartment has a T1 line that the whole complex shares. I don’t know much about this internet thing, other than that it gets me my SDMB fix. Is there any way that whoever manages the complex’s network (if I’m even using the right word) could monitor what I’m doing online? Is there any way that I could tell? Is there any way that I could prevent such snooping?
Yes, Whoever controls the network can see what you send over it. Some things are encrypted so they can’t see the data itself but where the data is going and how much of it there is.
They can see what sites you’re visiting and for how long, and monitor the size of uploads/downloads. No, there’s probably no way you would be able to tell that you are being monitored.
I don’t think there is a way they could tell too much more than that without having access to your computer, but I could be wrong.
gazpacho is correct. Any data that is not encrypted can be easily monitored since the traffic is in clear, readable text. It is not likely that the people maintaining the network would bother or care.
For someone to know where you are surfing they would
not only have to either sniff your packets and decrypt them
(or run a decryptor,) but also insert the headers into a
reverse look-up to see where you went. This is easy but I
don’t think very many people are watching everyone. Do you?
If you’re overly concerned, you could use something like this to protect your communication from snoops:
http://www.anonymizer.com/consumer/products/total_net_shield/
Most web traffic is unencrypted. A simple network sniffer would capture all to- and from- data and automatically do the reverse DNS look-ups. It would be tedious to go through all of the data to find something interesting, but if the snooper was looking for something particular, it would be easy to find it. More sophisticated sniffing tools do more of this work automatically and can even allow a snooper to watch your traffic in real-time. Most “important” info sent over the web is encrypted (like connecting to your bank account), but email typically isn’t. So if you email the password to your secret vault, then you are probably out of luck.
But again, it is unlikely that the building staff would bother or care. It is also very unlikely that your neighbors could access your data from their apartments. It is always possible that a neighbor could crack into the apartment’s gear (physically or over the network); that would depend on how careful the aparment staff are in securing the network. Even so, the neighbor still might not know which internet traffic was yours.
just email someone with the words “bomb, terrorist, child porn” in it. If you hear a heavy knock on the door then you may be being monitored