[Q] Safe web and app use on shared wifi

[theinstagator]

Hi all,

I am moving into a shared accommodation soon and will be sharing a wifi network with a few other people and whilst I hope I can eventually trust them I would prefer to keep possible access to my account and password details at a minimum to begin with. I have tried a forum and google search but information seems to be focused around not using sensitive data on public wifi networks.

What I need to know is how can I block someone on my wifi network from snooping on my accounts and internet browsing whilst using the samsung galaxy s2. I'm sure some of this also crosses over with normal pc/mac safe practice and I'm sure there are many people/students that would find this information very useful. Thank you in advance and by the way I am rooted.

 

[theinstagator]

Anyone?

Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda app-developers app

 

[theinstagator]

Is incognito browsing using the android chrome browser enough?

 

[theinstagator]

How about a proxy server?

 

[theinstagator]

Solved, I think the TOR (Orbot) app seems like a good way to go.

 

[androidpicks]

What I need to know is how can I block someone on my wifi network from snooping on my accounts and internet browsing whilst using the samsung galaxy s2. I'm sure some of this also crosses over with normal pc/mac safe practice and I'm sure there are many people/students that would find this information very useful. Thank you in advance and by the way I am rooted.

You should consider different kinds of traffic:

1- Unsecure unimportant traffic. I don't care if someone else snoop the web pages I'm reading from accuweather or XDA.

2- Secured traffic. Anything HTTPS is safe. People could figure out you're accessing your bank's site, but can't know what you're doing there.

3- Unsecured important traffic. If you send login or other personal information without using encryption (https), that's problematic. A secure proxy / VPN can help here. There shouldn't be much in that category though.

4- Bad traffic. If you want to google how to kill kittens and sell organs, use Tor whether or not you're on shared wifi.

Tor's always good, and the more people use it the better it gets, but it's slow. You might not want to use it all the time.

 

[theinstagator]

You should consider different kinds of traffic:

1- Unsecure unimportant traffic. I don't care if someone else snoop the web pages I'm reading from accuweather or XDA.

2- Secured traffic. Anything HTTPS is safe. People could figure out you're accessing your bank's site, but can't know what you're doing there.

3- Unsecured important traffic. If you send login or other personal information without using encryption (https), that's problematic. A secure proxy / VPN can help here. There shouldn't be much in that category though.

4- Bad traffic. If you want to google how to kill kittens and sell organs, use Tor whether or not you're on shared wifi.

Tor's always good, and the more people use it the better it gets, but it's slow. You might not want to use it all the time.

Thanks for your reply, I had given up hope that anyone would reply to this. Would TOR also encrypt app traffic as well? For example I have read about an app for android that you can get/compile that would allow you access to someones facebook account if they were on the same wifi network.

In reference to your point 2 about secured traffic, I'm curious about about what dangers there are that we are warned about when using public wifi if important HTTPS sites traffic is encrypted?

 

[Immortalis]

Even if the webpage is secured by AES-256 bit key and you're browsing it on unsecured network, you're still vulnerable to attacks.