Is my hard drive opaque on a public network?
First off, there’s nothing special about WiFi–all this applies even if you were to plug in an ethernet cable instead. On most networks, anybody else on the network with a minimum of skill can see your network traffic. So, if I’m sitting next to you at the library, I can eavesdrop on your “conversation” with metafilter.com. I used to do this all the time during boring college lectures: I’d put my network card in promiscuous mode, and giggle at all the people hitting porn sites in a lecture hall. This is the precise reason that we have HTTPS: so that when you log into your banking site, it’s encrypted from your CPU to the server’s CPU, and you can’t be eavesdropped upon. Please note that HTTPS encryption, like when you go to your bank’s site, is totally separate from WiFi encryption. WiFi encryption prevents people outside the WiFi network from gaining access to it or listening to communications. Once somebody is part of the network (i.e. the have the keys), they can listen to all traff
