If you were downloading music and games from a Work Wifi, and knew the password is there any way they could trace you and what you have downloaded?
3 Answers
Your question is devoid of about all useful information what would allow me to answer it, so I will resort to stochastically non-causal inference, also known as "guessing".
I suppose that you are connecting to a WiFi access point, provided by your employer for tasks that do not include massive downloading of entertainment datasets of questionable legality. Hence your understandable wariness. Moreover, I assume that the WiFi access point requires a connection password, that you know, but is not user-specific (all users of the access point use the same password). (If the password is user-specific then you are already doomed and the security people are on their way to club you to death.)
Under these conditions, the maintainers of the access point may know that the access point knows, i.e. the MAC address of your computer, the download points, the download times, and possibly what was downloaded, depending on the involved protocols. If these people are so inclined, then they may try to correlate the download times with what they know about the physical presence of employees who appear to bring and use their personal laptop at work. If you greatly abused the bandwidth or triggered some legal retaliation, then they may be intent on identifying the culprit, and since you are a corporeal human being whose actions leaves traces everywhere in the non-computer world, chances are that they may find you. Simply put, some of your colleagues are probably aware of your downloading habits, and they may rat on you.
-
...the security people are on their way to club you to death
seems legit. Nov 6, 2014 at 15:15 -
FWIW it' also worth noting that many corporate level Wi-Fi solutions include facilities to physically locate wireless signals via triangulation based on proximity to multiple APs. Whilst this isn't perfect, depending on how sparsely the office is populated it may be possible for them to use this information to precisely locate a given device. Nov 6, 2014 at 15:58
-
Yes. The people who operate business networks log nearly everything for a variety of regulatory, security, and performance-monitoring reasons. "They" will know from their logs what IP address was assigned to you at given times. So, if anyone (like the RIAA) complains, they'll find out it was you, or at least your password. (See Tom Leek's answer about MAC addresses if you're using a password everyone knows, i.e. a pre-shared key.)
Even if you are assigned an internal (RFC 1918) address, which is likely, someone watching from outside (like the RIAA) will see the external address, which will identify the company. It is quite likely that the external address can be mapped to your internal address using log information.
Depending on how that WiFi network is set up, there may also be logs of the URLs visited, which would answer the "what you have downloaded" part of the question. In that case, you might get a call from HR even if no one from outside complains.
Yes, this is a very, VERY bad idea. A variety of mechanisms could allow your computer to be identified, even over a wireless connection, and when they (your employer) track you down after getting nasty letters from the RIAA, you are likely to get a nasty letter in the form of a pink slip. Don't be stupid and use your work Internet for illegal activity.