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I accidentally used my work's wifi to look at porn using my iPhone.

I refreshed a tab I had open from a session when I wasn't at work. Now I'm worried my firm will find out.

The network is password protected, but I didn't have to enter a username. My phone's name at the time was set to my own name (i have since changed this) - will this show up under wifi network history logs? Can my MAC address or IP address of the phone be linked to my phone number? Or does my iPhone show up any other details about me?

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It is possible for them to identify you, but whether or not they will is another matter.

If the password to get on the WiFi network is simply a WPA password (or similar) then this will not identify you in itself. They will most likely have access to your device's host name and could always identify you via other methods. Whilst your MAC address identifies the device, it does not identify the owner. That said, it wouldn't be too difficult to figure out who it belonged to if you were a network administrator. The same goes for the IP really.

I wouldn't worry too much about it. Unless your company operates some incredibly stringent IT policies and has time to spend on trying to determine who you are, this will likely slip under the radar.

The lesson to learn is, do you really need to use your corporate WiFi? I have enough mobile data allowance to not have to pass my traffic through any more network operators than is necessary.

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  • Thanks Scott, much appreciated. What is a WPA password? So even though I've changed my iPhone's username now, will this have been recorded at the time of the session? How long do firms usually keep wifi history logs? Do they take up a lot of space in a large firm, and are likely to be deleted? It only happened once, but I want to be as sure as possible I can't be traced!
    – DeadlyDoug
    Commented Nov 15, 2013 at 8:04
  • WPA is an encryption protocol usually used to protect WiFi networks. If you didn't have to input a username it was most likely WPA. I can't say how much or little they would record, or how long they would keep it for. That depends on their policies. As I say, unless they are incredibly stringent, the chances are you should be ok. If they wanted to track your usage more easily they would implement something like RADIUS, where you require a username.
    – Scott Helme
    Commented Nov 15, 2013 at 8:11
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This entirely depends on the infrastructure behind the wireless AP you are connected to.

What can be seen more less:

Phone Model, Location, Used Services, Used or In Usage Applications (such as application names), Bandwidth usage, Total amount of data spend per application.(both incoming and outgoing), Visited web sites(url list) and total amount of data and time spend at each url, Phone Operating System, ip, and many others.

On the other hand I would not be worried at all if I were you. Such complicated systems and resources are not used to track what people are doing but instead, leveraging the quality of experience of a subscriber.

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