Sharing Broadband

[Curitiba]

Hello

I live in a rented house and one of my (many) housemates has Broadband. He's offered for me to have a 'router' and use his Broadband access (I still use dial-up).

I am very aware of security, if I do that, will he be able to view any of my details re use of internet? Will he have access to my computer remotely? Will he be able to view my e-mails?? Help! I would love to start using Broadband.

[Siamsal]

If you are going through his router/firewall he could conceiveably monitor what you access. Although usually only high spec routers keep such detailed data.

He could also run a program on his PC to watch the data traffic on the LAN (IE your PC's data). This could provide much more detailed info about what you are doing on the internet and enable snooping on your email.

He could, if you have set up your PC sloppily, access it and/or control it, because your PC would be on the same LAN as his and you are both on the same side as the router/firewall.

So in summary: yes, its possible, and you are right to be concerned but it's difficult to give an exact answer without more details of the hardware,

[stevie21]

It's so unlikely that he'll get access to anything whatsoever that I wouldn't give it a milliseconds thought. Accessing t'internet via a router is one of the safer ways of being online so go for it.

[fo3nix]

Finally, if you trust him enough for him to be your housemate, then you can trust him enough to share broadband with you. Siamsal is entirely correct however. But as stevie says, using a router makes you safer from outsiders (the NAT helps enormously, as well as any other form of firewall), and you won't be able to get a dialer on your computer and get a huge phone bill.