Basically I’m wondering. When I’m on my home WiFi, how does what I do on it stay on the router? And how can someone see everything I Did on the router? Likewise w/Data?
In: Technology
Your wireless at home and your cell phone data work in similar ways. They use wireless signals to connect you to the internet. When you connect, the wireless or data give you an address that tell your device where to go to find internet.
The main stuff that is/can be store are your DNS requests. What’s DNS? Well, it provides a name to an IP address. So instead of going to 172.217.10.36 you go to www.google.com. Those lookups can be stored and referenced by a home network and are stored and can be looked up by your ISP/phone carrier.
It depends on the “someone”. If Someone is your Dad the IT Guy, then he’s likely monitoring everything you do, and logging it for later inspection. Your data might be encrypted, if you use good SSL and/or VPN links and Dad’s not so paranoid that he’s installed a deep packet inspection device. All the URLs and their search counterparts isn’t even sent encrypted.
If Someone is the NSA, you should stop being a terrorist, as they’re likely reading everything you write.
If Someone is your little brother the pest, then the router is operating with the ISPs default settings and not saving anything permanently. Turn it off and back on and all’s gone.
Things stay on your router because of a thing called network address translation. (“nat(ing)”) Basically you have one address and things are sent to that one place. Then after you get everything back it is routed to where it is supposed to go.
It is like if you had your address on some mail but not the name. Everyone can write letters and those letters are put in the same mailbox. (same address) When the letter return you know that you are talking to someone in Brazil and your brother is talking to someone in France. (nating) The mailman has no idea who is talking to Brazil and who to France. It is all going to the same address and you sort it once it comes back to your address.
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