Can your internet search history be accessed through WiFi?

As if our privacy wasn’t threatened enough, some social media users report falling victim to someone accessing their internet search history through WiFi. Is it something you should be worried about?​

From social media platforms creating users’ psychological profiles to hackers preying on sensitive data, our privacy online is constantly at risk.

A largely unheard-of intrusion into privacy was reported by a social media user.

“Why did no one tell me that you can access somebody’s internet search history through the WiFi?” he asked.

The video was also shared by Caitlin Sarian, a cybersecurity influencer, who said that the case illustrates “how invasion of privacy looks these days.”

“Imagine this: you’re at home, browsing your WiFi, and someone sneaks a peek at your search history,” she says.

With WiFi carrying nearly 90% of all data traffic flowing over consumer smartphones in the US, one might assume that our most intimate browsing habits can be easily exposed.

However, experts say that the concerns may be slightly overblown.

“The envelope, not the letter,” is exposed

Karolis Kačiulis, a lead systems engineer at Surfshark, explains that search history isn’t stored directly “on” the WiFi network, but someone with administrative access to it can monitor all traffic passing through it.

“While most modern web traffic is encrypted, this encryption primarily protects the content of your data rather than the metadata,” he tells Cybernews.

Because specific IP addresses are often tied to unique services, an administrator can infer which platforms a user is visiting.

Moreover, Domain Name System (DNS) – the mechanism that translates human-readable addresses like “cybernews.com” into numerical IP addresses – frequently operates over unencrypted channels.

“By capturing these DNS queries, a network observer can see exactly which domains you are attempting to resolve,” he says.

In other words, according to Henry Fisher, CEO and founder at Techlore, the network operator can only see the sites a user visited, when, and for how long, along with a lot of metadata around them, but not the queries themselves.

What the network does see is the envelope, not the letter.

Henry Fisher

The one real exception, Fisher adds, is a managed device, such as a school or work laptop with a certificate installed by IT, which can be configured to read the contents of network traffic, including search queries.

Halil Ibrahim Dursunoglu, a faculty specialist in computer science and cybersecurity at Western Michigan University, says public WiFi warrants additional caution, even if Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) protocol offers significant protection.

“Users should still avoid ignoring certificate warnings, connecting to suspicious look-alike networks, or installing certificates or software requested by an untrusted network,” he says.

How do I protect my search history?

Kačiulis, however, warns that by combining the visibility of destination IP addresses with unencrypted DNS requests, a network administrator can reconstruct a highly accurate profile of a user’s browsing behavior.

While this isn't technically a log of your ‘search history’ in the way a browser stores it, it provides enough information to build a rough equivalent of a user's internet activity.

Karolis Kačiulis

The bottom line is that connecting to someone’s WiFi doesn’t give them full-blown access to your browsing history.

However, if you’re one of the privacy-maxxers, there’s something you can do, according to Dursunoglu:

• Keep devices and browsers updated.
• Use websites starting with HTTPS.
• Enable encrypted DNS when appropriate.
• Secure home WiFi with security protocols such as WPA2 or WPA3 and a strong, unique password.
• Change the default router administrator credentials.
• Enabling multi-factor authentication on important accounts.

He tells Cybernews, “A reputable VPN can provide an additional layer of privacy on untrusted networks because it encrypts traffic between the device and the VPN provider.”