Am I being spied on?

Question

If two computers in the same household are sharing a router (wireless or not), can one computer "spy" on another?

Meaning: Can someone in my house see what I am doing on my computer with their computer?

Answer 1

Yes... someone who can login to the router can access any logs that are active and some routers have detailed activity logging... so they could see the sites you visited. If it is a wireless router and you just plugged it in and it worked, your neighbors could be loging into your router and seeing your activity. Encryption should be setup on the router and each client and the keys changed once in a while.

If someone installed a keylogger like Ghost Keylogger on your system they would have to have about 5 minutes of physical access to your computer. They could set it up to log all activity (programs you ran with date and times, keystrokes entered into each application, all web sites visited with keys logged including all logins and passwords. A keylog is much easier to read and more telling than an actual VIEW of your screen in realtime. A key log file can be periodically e-mailed to a preset e-mail adress using your SMTP server so that someone OUTSIDE your router's subnet can see what you are doing. If I wanted to spy on someone I would use one of those. Or a hardware keylogger which sits between your keyboard and computer (you need physical access to install and retreive it periodically). There ARE useable loggers that can be set to capture screens periodically so the spy can play back a type of slideshow after retreiving the file... and they can see what you were seeing on your screen. BUT those are typically not very useful and usually bog down the victims computer until it is very slow or they become suspicious and find the application.

A creative programmer could create a packager to install a keylogger as a secret payload in a trojan application if they were clever. I would not be surprised if there is a packager like this availalble to the public. It HAS been done before with Back Orifice and was very easy to use. This would mean someone could remotely figure out your SMTP server based on knowing your ISP and perhaps e-mail you or send a file transfer via an IM program and tell you it is a cute new screen saver. You install it and viola you have a cute new screen saver, but it also installs the pre-configured keylogger and they have you.

The keylogger threat is huge because it only has to be active for a day or a few hours and the spy might have your logins to your bank, your e-mail, your MYSPACE, etc... and then they could spy on you indefinitely and remove the keylogger at that point and login to your e-mail, bank account, etc.. to spy.

The good news is that nowadays most of these threats are detectable with decent AV software. If you don't have any I recommend installing AVG free. If you come home one day and your anti-virus software has been removed... get suspicious.

Answer 2

I have a computer more than 3 years old; I do not have wireless anything. Nevertheless, the PC-Cilling (anti-virus, etc.) keeps informing that the "following computers are on my network". In otherwords, YES, a very emphatic YES, others in your house can "see" what you are doing. If you have wireless, anyone within a quarter mile radius up to about a 1 mile radius can "see" whatever you type on your computer.
And you thought you were safe?
That's why we need encryption on every computer; that's why we need laws to protect consumers against ID theft, laws that have a bite to them.
Yes, there are so many reasons why you might not want others to know what you are typing, what websites you are visiting, such as bank statements, credit card statements, personals (such as a diary) and so much more.
Get all the different software that others advise; but, remember, if your computer is CONNECTED to the internet (even if you are logged off), you are NOT SAFE from the internet. You must physically disconnect (as turning off the modem) or have a software that disconnects you (such as PC-Cillin).

Answer 3

Yes, it's very easy to spy on another computer on the same network. It's possible to use a packet sniffer to view the data being transmitted from 'computer A' to the network. Any password, IM conversations - anything sent over a plain text connection can be seen quite easily.

Unfortunately there is little you can do to protect yourself from this besides communicating over secure connections or connecting to another network.

Ethereal is a great example of an open source packet sniffer.

http://www.ethereal.com/

Answer 4

It depends on the operating system, the networking software, and the choices you have made. If you are using Windows XP, and using the networking software built in then the only things on your computer that are exposed to the other computer are the Shared Documents and what you have dragged there. Of course if someone got on your machine and dragged C:\, then everything is visible, but you can look and check.

Answer 5

If you are talking about seeing exactly what is on the computer... not without breaking into it... if you are strictly talking about watching what you do on the internet, yes, either through promiscuous capture on WiFi, or via an ARP poisoning for wired and wireless with AP isolation.

Answer 6

odds are if your computer is unprotected then yes you are infected with spy ware however there is somthing that you can do about it there are many different programs that you can use to rid your computer of nasty viruses which can lead to identity theft Spy Sweeper is the best program that i have ever used and Norton Antivirus is more trouble than its worth

Answer 7

yea, and if its your parents computer they probablly have a software on your computer that they put on themselves to monitor your activities.

I had one on my computer and there was a pass to it.
I download a pass hacking file and it worked, then i changed around all the data like ip adress's and what computer to spy on.

When they look at the mopniter it just says system error and wont show them anything

Answer 8

Are you feeling guilty because you are going to sites you should not be viewing? Anyone can find these sites on your computer easily.

Answer 9

Sure. It's not even hard to do.

Maybe you better behave. The easiest way to get rid of someone snooping on you is to bore them to death.

Answer 10

Yes very much possible.
They can get to know the sites you visit ...even load keyloggers and get your passwords etc etc