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> I'm in the humanities and certain scholars working with culture and technology love to make a huge deal about data leakage and how intertwined we all are precisely because you can put a NIC in promiscuous mode and cap packets that weren't meant for you. For wired networks, a lot of those concerns about machines receiving other machines traffic are somewhat outdated–they were very valid in the 1980s and 1990s, but now in the 2010s they are far less pressing (although not completely gone). Back when we used coax Ethernet or Ethernet hubs, the norm was every machine got every other machine's traffic, and the machine's NIC was responsible for filtering out the traffic destined for other machines, so spying on other people's traffic was easy, and could be done without being detected. Now, with Ethernet switches, the norm is that each machine only gets its own traffic (plus broadcast traffic destined for all machines.) It is possible to overload a switch into a hub by MAC flooding, but in a well-maintained corporate network you can't get away with that for long without being caught. (A home network or small business network you probably can do it for a long time without being detected, since those networks are usually poorly monitored.) So, in a contemporary well-maintained Ethernet network, it is unlikely your traffic is being sent to other people's machines. Of course, you shouldn't rely on that if you care about your security and privacy. But, encryption is far more common (and far stronger) nowadays, so even if you see someone else's traffic, you are much less likely to understand it. That is the best answer to the concern – who cares if someone else gets your traffic if they can't read it? (Well, if they save it for a few decades, computers might become fast enough to be able to break it – but, it is very unlikely anyone could be bothered.) For wireless networks, these concerns are still very valid. The best advice with wireless networks, even secure ones, is always use a VPN. |