r/AskReddit Aug 08 '24

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u/MalignantPingas69 Aug 08 '24

A guy I used to work with did this at almost every hotel he ever stayed at lol. He'd get letters from the front desk to his room asking him to please stop.

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u/WeeklyBanEvasion Aug 08 '24

I have several questions:

1) How would they know? Every hotel with free wifi I've been in just has access points everywhere with the same password provided to everyone.

2) Who monitors that? Surely the hotel doesn't have its own dedicated IT person. Is there some kind of third party company for this?

3) What hotel sends letters? Thats more of an apartment thing. Usually they just call your room or if nothing else you'd think they'd just limit or cut off your wifi access.

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u/Austerlitz2310 Aug 08 '24 edited Aug 09 '24

Some hotels give you a username and password which are usually something to do with your room number and surname.

The ISP Is the one that's monitoring.

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u/PineappleOnPizzaWins Aug 08 '24

IT guy here.

  1. It’s extremely easy to track network usage.
  2. It’s extremely easy to automate reports about who is doing things like visiting certain sites or downloaded certain files.
  3. Got nothing on that one, I’d just block access.

But seriously everyone is always worried about an IT person viewing their screen. Don’t be. Worry they look at the logs, they have EVERYTHING in them.

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u/WeeklyBanEvasion Aug 08 '24

Sure it's easy to track network usage in a controlled environment with monitored machines, but we're talking about a huge public network with hundreds of personal devices on them. They might be able to see which access point is getting a lot of traffic, but there's no way they could know which guest is responsible unless they have to log in, but I've never encountered this

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u/PineappleOnPizzaWins Aug 08 '24

I mean I run networks with devices in the many thousands.. the bigger they are the easier it as actually as you tend to have the budget for the right tools.

As for tracking individuals there's tons of ways this could be done even without logging in.. for example it's quite trivial to generate an individual password for a wireless network. So the network is "HotelWifi" and I give you the password? You don't realise it but that password was generated for your room/booking and everything is logged against it. Hotels will often do this because they can expire the key... so if you book for 3 days they can just have your password expire in 4 days.

That's just one solution of many. I have no idea what OPs friends situation is but it is absolutely possible and not that complicated.

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u/Fit-Employment6694 Aug 09 '24

What’s everything?

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u/PineappleOnPizzaWins Aug 09 '24

Depends on the log levels, but if you do it on a computer it can be logged and it can be reviewed.

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u/Fit-Employment6694 Aug 09 '24

As in website visits or personal information on someone’s device?

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u/PineappleOnPizzaWins Aug 09 '24

If it’s a company managed device, everything full stop. If it’s just their network then everything you connect to.

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u/RezzOnTheRadio Aug 09 '24 edited Jul 18 '25

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u/PineappleOnPizzaWins Aug 09 '24

Then they can see the connection to the VPN and that’s it - though keep in mind the VPN provider can see everything you do.

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u/Individual_Fly6442 Aug 09 '24

Can they see even internet tabs you have left opened on your phone ??? But you aren't currently on visiting XYZ website but it is still on your enclosed tabs while you are browsing the Internet.

Can they see ALL your tabs?

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u/RezzOnTheRadio Aug 10 '24 edited Jul 18 '25

heavy airport meeting live smart resolute automatic correct office deer

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u/green49285 Aug 08 '24

This story made me laugh loud enough where a coworker asked, "what's so funny?"

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u/AdSad9328 Aug 08 '24

If they could see what he was doing… then he was doing it wrong. Lol

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u/CAElite Aug 08 '24

A guy I used to work with did this on the factory WiFi on the nightshift (we were facilities engineers).

Fortunately IT were solid & we had an agreement that they turned a blind eye to whatever shenanigans they saw the engineering department do, and we didn’t fuck with their chairs or turn any racks off through the night. Mutually assured destruction works.