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Is Wi-Fi Provided by My Landlord Safe?

Question: I’m a cable internet user now, but I’m moving into a new apartment where the landlord provides free wireless internet to me and two other tenants in the house. I just have to supply a wireless adapter/card for my PC. How do I take advantage of my new landlord’s offer and at the same time protect my personal electronic information from the other tenants — and my landlord — when I cannot control the router?

By having administrative access to the router providing your internet access — be it an open WiFi hotspot, a hotel, your place of employment, or even your internet service provider, or ISP — the provider can monitor your usage. Accidentally or on purpose, they may also allow others on the network to sniff your traffic.

It doesn’t matter whether the connection is wired or wireless.

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Who do you trust?

In general, we trust our ISP, and perhaps even our employer, but it’s a bad idea to trust hotels and open Wi-Fi hotspots. Both are easily abused, either by network administrators or by those willing to sit quietly in a corner and capture internet traffic passing by.

In either case, they may be able to catch accounts, passwords, and more from users who haven’t sufficiently protected themselves.

A Landlord's Key Hand-offAs generous as your landlord’s offer is, it falls into exactly the same boat.

  • When your landlord provides your internet, that makes him your ISP. If he’s technically knowledgeable, he can watch the traffic on the network he’s providing.
  • Depending on the network configuration, your neighbors (or anyone in range of the wireless network) might also be able to watch traffic sent wirelessly.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because it is: it’s exactly the same risk you run when using an open Wi-Fi hotspot at your local coffee shop or elsewhere.

The good news, then, is that exactly the same solutions apply.

  • Secure connections. Any connection beginning with https instead of http is an encrypted connection. Your landlord or others might see which sites you are visiting (e.g. gmail.com), but the data (e.g. your email) is encrypted. Using an https connection to a service like Gmail is one way to secure your email from snooping.1 The same is true when using desktop email programs, except it’s called SSL or TLS when configuring your email account connections.
  • VPNs. A VPN, or “Virtual Private Network”, is a fully encrypted connection to a VPN server, which then connects you to the internet. These are typically meant for people who travel and use WiFi hotspots a lot, but they’re useful in many other situations as well.
  • Anonymous web surfing. If you use a service like TOR, snoopers might be able to tell you’re using the service, but they cannot tell where you’re surfing; it’s all encrypted.

Recommendations

Given that you’ll be connecting this way almost exclusively in your new residence, I’d recommend a VPN as the easiest solution. It’ll protect everything you do from your landlord and neighbors. I have been happy with TunnelBear myself, but there are many other popular services.

On the other hand, the ultimate solution is getting your own internet connection independent of your landlord. It’s worth at least a quick look and cost comparison. Be sure to include the option of using your mobile provider as well. Depending on your data plan and how you use the internet, this can be a very reasonable alternative.

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Footnotes & References

1: In theory, a hotspot owner or ISP could perform a man-in-the-middle attack and possibly intercept the encrypted traffic. This is extremely difficult, and rare, and typically has warning signs, including error messages of various sorts.

16 comments on “Is Wi-Fi Provided by My Landlord Safe?”

  1. Aside from Leo’s points, this rings lots of alarm bells for me.

    I don’t know where the person asking the question lives, but I did notice a mention of “house” (as opposed to an apartment building) and a total of three tenants, including himself.

    I live in southern Brooklyn where unscrupulous practices by landlords are sadly not uncommon. I can easily envision the inquirer’s (apparently small-time) landlord sharing a residential broadband with multiple households without permission of the underlying ISP, which is surely a violation of the ISP’s terms of use. (After all, the ISP wants to sell broadband to individual households, so they stand to lose revenue in a situation like this.)

    There are three other problems here:

    First, if the underlying ISP is a cable provider, even people who connect directly to the cable network can suffer slowdowns during peak hours In fact, this can also happen with DSL, even though DSL connections are supposedly not shared with neighbors. (Google [brooklyn verizon dsl peak slowdowns] for an proof of this). Now you are talking about sharing a single connection which is subject to a “double slowdown” if the other tenants are hitting the Wi-Fi connection hard.

    The second problem is that, should anything go wrong with the connection, if it should go down completely, let’s say, you have additional layers of complication in getting the problem solved. You can’t call the underlying ISP directly, and the landlord might have better things to do than deal with Internet connectivity problems. Sure, if the landlord lives in the house and uses the connection himself, it’s in his best interest to get such problems solved, but what if he’s out of town or something when this happens?

    Finally, there is the recently-reported case of Roderick Vosburgh, whose home was raided last year in an FBI sting involving posted hyperlinks that purported to be illegal videos of minors having sex. Vosburgh was found guily of attempting to download child pornography and faces three to four years in prison. A CNET article about this case mentions the following:

    QUOTE:

    The defendant in [another similar] case, Travis Carter, suggested that any of the neighbors could be using his wireless network. (The public defender’s office even sent out an investigator who confirmed that dozens of homes were within Wi-Fi range.)

    But the magistrate judge ruled that even the possibilities of spoofing or other users of an open Wi-Fi connection “would not have negated a substantial basis for concluding that there was probable cause to believe that evidence of child pornography would be found on the premises to be searched.” Translated, that means the search warrant was valid.

    END QUOTE

    So, it I were you, I would absolutely, positively get my own Internet connection and steer clear of the Wi-Fi deal completely.

    Reply
  2. I try to use WiFi as little as possible and never use my credit card info online if I can avoid it. If you need reason to, check out some clips from a TV show that demonstrates how unscrupulous people can watch your WiFi and steal your credit card info. I can’t post links here, so, search youtube for wifi and real hustle.

    Reply
  3. I am the “landlord” (NOT the one in the article above). I don’t know how to look at my “tenant’s” data, but how do I protect myself from my tenant and for that matter someone in another apartment or someone just driving by the apartment building? According to my tenant, there are 8 different networks registering on his laptop (including mine).

    Because my tenant shares the cost of the connection with me, I feel I have to protect the both of us from “problems.”

    I have a Linksys Wireless-G 2.4 MHz Broadband Router. I am wired directly to the router and my tenant uses the wireless connection. The router itself has a password on it and you need to enter an encryption key to gain access to the network to which my router is attached. Thanks, ERIC

    Reply
  4. In response to Kannie’s comment. Google Chrome’s “incognito” mode does not count as anonymous web surfing. The mode only does not store any information on your computer about the sites you’ve visited. All the sites you visit still know your IP and the data is by no means encrypted. TOR works pretty good, but to use it in Chrome, you need to follow these instructions [broken link removed]

    Reply
  5. I am also using my landlords free unlimited internet in the residence. I set up a vpn and a paid proxy only to discover that although he coulod not see what I was doing he still could monitor my bandwidth usage. After watching steaming movies on a LEGAL site I was informed I am now only to browse and send emails. So to me the paid VPN and the paid Proxy was useless. Buy the way my downloads for the streams was 2.8 gig = two hd movies. So no more movies and no more skype. Thanks VPN

    Reply
  6. speaking of SSL and TLS, in internet options under the advanced tab
    there are SSL 2.0 and 3.0, and TLS 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2 can i just check
    them all and let whichever one comes along be used?

    Reply
    • Generally yes. The older ones have security issues, but websites are being updated to no longer use them, and I’m not aware of any exploits that would actually impact the average consumer.

      Reply
  7. Honestly, getting a private one is the best choice. You don’t know what the other tenants are doing with the internet connection personally, not mentioning they could EASILY monitor what you are doing. Of course, it might be paranoid, but sometimes it is better to be paranoid than getting a fine for downloading illegally when you have no idea what is going on. Either this or getting a VPN, but that might not be enough. Private connection + a VPN (nordVPN probably would be a good choice, offering a lot for the price the ask) and then you won’t need to ask the landlords permission to get your connection fixed later on.

    Reply
  8. Another option is a MiFi device. It connects to the cell phone network, then provides WiFi to your device. If you strong password and guard access to your MiFi, you get 1 user unshared internet and it is fairly secure. It is portable so you can take it to hotels or that café. The downside is that it probably provides less overall bandwidth, and there is usually a cost. My cell service charges $15/month. Some cell providers let you use your smart phone for the same purpose.

    If you mainly need internet access in your apartment, VPN is a great choice.

    Reply
    • A MiFi is useful but I don’t believe most people need one as they probably already have WiFi and USB tethering built into their phone. I’ve been using WiFi tethering on all of my phones for the last 10 years. I believe it’s a feature built into all smartphones nowadays. Some carriers require an additional fee for tethering but when I had a T-Mobile account which required a fee, I was able to use it for free because I used my own unlocked phone which bypassed the paywall.

      Reply
  9. UGH! Website after website, no one is smart enough to trim the fat and give us what we came for. GRR! Why is it that no one can review a VPN properly, EVER?? No need for 3 million words, y’all! Tell us THE ONLY THING WE NEED TO KNOW!!!! Does TUNNELBEAR let you post comments? AT:
    YouTube
    Websites (like news)
    Forums (like Tapatalk etc.)

    WELL???
    I have yet to find a single VPN or proxy that isn’t a dumb useless gimmick that DISABLES FORUM COMMENTS! Try it and report back!!!”

    You get to the comments box and the submit button is disabled as soon as you’ve type. Why!??! WHat’s the use if you can’t go back to the forum some schmuck insulted you at and YOU got banned for calling him out on his c*rap! WELL???!!!!

    Will this TunnelBear work yes or no? And if not, which VPN lets you comment all over the internet as above?? Thx

    Reply
    • VPNs don’t block comments or movie sites. Some forums and movie sites block VPNs. Those sites monitor the incoming IP numbers and if too much activity is coming from the same IP number, the site assumes it’s a VPN and may block some kinds of access like posting or watching a movie. I suppose a good VPN changes their IP number more frequently. A friend of mine recommends smaller higher priced VPNs as they are less detectable. Tummel Bear offers great service, but I’ve had overseas content blocked.

      Reply
  10. Thanks. I have no idea what “movie sites” is. IMDb no longer has forums, since 2017. That said I’m not sure that you understood the question since there no single proxy or VPN I’ve tried for free lets you post comments, ever. Whether hide my *ss or anonymouse, to a proxy my UK friend paid for, none allow you to post comments, ever.

    Reply

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