Let me see if I understand this correctly. So if someone had nothing better to do, lonely and bored and extremely curious, they could lock themselves up in their apartment for the weekend and in the evenings, and snoop on the down traffic from their next door neighbors. (From this thread I'm assuming the upstream traffic is already encrypted?) Then if they made note of when the next door neighbors came home and left, they could assume which neighbor is downloading what data (i.e. websites, emails and such) Even if they aren't getting complete information (like a cell phone call that keeps breaking up in mid-conversation, but you can still sort of figure out what the topic is) that neighbor could get a general idea of what that persons interests are and such, by the down traffic of the URL's and maybe some data from emails to piece together? I guess they could visit those URL's and see what they are about. Perhaps get sort of a neighbors profile. In this day in age it sort of makes sense to be overly cautious, because there are so many people out there being overly irresponsible and malicious.
What do you all think this means: A coincidence or sniffing? I was researching for a project for about a week on the net. I later talked with one of my apartment neighbors about my findings. They said: "OH!, your next-door neighbor (who happens to be in the computer field), just mentioned to me how they found that same information on the internet too! You should talk together!" A few days after that, I took a couple of vacation days off from work. My neighbor noticed I didn't go to work so he stayed home at the same time, locked up in his appartment. Other times when I've come home from work, my neighbor sees me and dodges into his appartment. That all makes me go "humm". I never really thought much about all that until I read about data sniffing. Even with my non-broadcast wireless network name, wireless network passwords, and computer firewalls installed, it still made me wonder. Those don't protect you from sniffing, right? So what does all that mean? I wonder if packet sniffing is like the new cocaine -- Even though it's stupid and a waste of time to the general public, even a little sniff becomes addicting to some? If I want people to know what I'm doing, I'll tell them myself, thank you!
I've heard of anonymizing websites which create a secure, https or SSH-encrypted connection, for like $30 to $100 bucks a year. Do they keep people from reading data when they sniff? Heck, I'd pay it give my nosy neighbors the brush off!, I'm sure neighbors could still sniff, but they would get unreadable data right? Or can they sniff your data traffic at all with that service? Can anyone explain how this technology works, and if it would keep our broadband connections more private?
BTW...If I find out my neighbor is planning a trip to the Caribbean, I'm gonna scream! LOL!
