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Can anyone using my wifi see what I'm browsing?

I've already read questions and answers about this topic and everybody suggests to use VPN.

I have two questions: is Tor safe for this issue? If I navigate (with Chrome for example) to an https website what can other users see? I mean can they see just the site I'm browsing or other things (e.g.: I'm on Youtube, is the video I'm seeing an available information)?

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Can anyone using my wifi see what I'm browsing?

Well, that depends. If you are not being attacked (MITM, other users in promiscuous mode etc...) then the other users on your LAN can't really inspect your traffic, but your ISP can. Even if your traffic is encrypted, the ISP can't see exactly what you're visiting but it can use unencrypted information to gain some knowledge about your internet traffic and browsing activity, such as your DNS queries which are usually unencrypted. This can be suffice for your ISP to know most of the domains you visit etc...

Also your ISP could analyze your traffic patterns (or other unencrypted metadata) and extract useful information. For example, according to this article every youtube video has a unique traffic pattern when streamed to your device so if someone has access to your traffic, even if it is encrypted he can extract useful information. Those kind of attacks are called side channel attacks. Now if you are under attack, with what your ISP can do by default, the attacker can do also or worse.

Tor safe for this issue?

Tor or VPN in general, can be used to tunnel your traffic and hide/protect it from potential attackers. In this case even your ISP can't see as much information as before, but it knows that you are using Tor/VPN etc... Though, you must be sure that the VPN/Tor servers are legit and trustworthy. For example, in my opinion you shouldn't use Tor to transmit sensitive information since nothing guarantees that the servers your traffic gets tunneled through are trustworthy.

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  • I've heard about Wireshark. If I navigate on a https website what can somebody see using that software?I mean he can see just the domain I'm navigating or other things too? – user186890 Sep 19 '18 at 11:05
  • @giuliok94 Wireshark is an amazing tool for network analysis. If someone uses it against you and you visit an https website, then he can't see the exact url but he can probably see the domain. For example if I search google for something and then click on a link, then the attacker will probably see that I made a DNS request for e.g www.google.com and then for the domain of the site that I clicked. But again to do that you must be under attack, os simply your ISP for some reason inspects your traffic. – game0ver Sep 19 '18 at 11:10
  • @giuliok94 Under normal circumstances (not under attack), and if your network is protected, I wouldn't worry so much about the encrypted traffic. In an unknown network though, I wouldn't login to FTP, which is unencrypted, without knowing that my traffic is not inspected. – game0ver Sep 19 '18 at 11:13
  • Pihole and Unbound are a good start to keep your DNS queries hidden and true. docs.pi-hole.net/guides/unbound – Andy Anderson Sep 19 '18 at 17:58
  • @AndyAnderson there are many workarounds. In my opinion the best solution would be DNSSEC but unfortunately almost nobody seems to want to use it ... – game0ver Sep 19 '18 at 18:52

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