Samba Server: Can My ISP See What I am Transferring Over My LAN?

[may-yuhan]

My Raspberry Pi is connected via an ethernet cable to power-line adapter (A). (A) is connected to power-line adapter (B) via my power outlet. (B) is also connected to my routers LAN port and I was wondering a couple of things if someone could please clarify.

1) Can my ISP see the files on my Samba server?
2) Can my ISP see when I am transferring / downloading from my Samba server?
2a) If so what do they see exactly? The file name? The size? The actual file itself?

I read on the Internet that my ISP would not be able to see anything. Because it is within my LAN thus not connected to my ISP (the Internet).

I removed the cable that gives me Internet access (WAN port) and tried to connect to my Samba server but it did not load until I plugged it back in. Does anyone know why this is then?

Thanks!

 

[Isokolon]

well I can't talk about all ISPs

but I worked for one.

all I saw was how much data was transmitted and the IP adresses of sender and receiver and when. and that only if this person used the modem provided by us.

there's probably some guy who saw more data than me because he had access to the core routers and such, but tbh, people working at ISPs have too much to do to care about your Samba server. Filenames shouldn't be visible since it's all just data packets.

 

[CountOtis]

If the traffic is routing internally then I don't see a reason it would route through your ISP, which would raise an even bigger concern of trying to send SMB traffic across the internet. As per the reason for your smb share failing when removing WAN could be a number of things or a misconfiguration. It is always best practice to use encryption when possible. You can configure encryption on your samba server and make it so it enforces encryption. This would prevent other people on your intranet from being able to sniff packets sent and read what is being transferred between devices.

 

[may-yuhan]

If the traffic is routing internally then I don't see a reason it would route through your ISP, which would raise an even bigger concern of trying to send SMB traffic across the internet. As per the reason for your smb share failing when removing WAN could be a number of things or a misconfiguration. It is always best practice to use encryption when possible. You can configure encryption on your samba server and make it so it enforces encryption. This would prevent other people on your intranet from being able to sniff packets sent and read what is being transferred between devices.

Okay, I have managed to connect to my Samba server without the need of my WAN connection. Had to do with DNS etc. So yeah, obviously my ISP can't see anything now that I am disconnected from them (WAN).

But what were they able to see before I reconfigured it? I wonder...

 

[may-yuhan]

well I can't talk about all ISPs

but I worked for one.

all I saw was how much data was transmitted and the IP adresses of sender and receiver and when. and that only if this person used the modem provided by us.

there's probably some guy who saw more data than me because he had access to the core routers and such, but tbh, people working at ISPs have too much to do to care about your Samba server. Filenames shouldn't be visible since it's all just data packets.

So they can only monitor the data packets? Basically the file in it's entirety EXCEPT for the filename? If a filename does not belong to those data packets then what does the filename belong to? How would they be able to monitor newly released movies with copyrights that people illegally download if they couldn't see the filename? It's not like they will specifically target a person and open his / her downloaded contents to see if he is downloading illegally. Do you perhaps know?

 

[kanewolf]

Network traffic on the LAN does not go through the router to the ISP. There are things the software playing a move could use the internet for. For example, let's say you have "Star Wars" on your Samba server and you bring it up in a media player. The metadata is incomplete because you didn't populate it when you ripped it from DVD (or the pirated copy you downloaded didn't have all the metadata). The player could use the file name "Star Wars" to search for metadata. THAT traffic could be seen by your ISP. The file access could not be. Somebody monitoring all your ISP traffic could potentially figure out that you have accessed the movie "Star Wars". But they would do it indirectly, by looking at the metadata queries the media player made, not because of the file access.

 

[may-yuhan]

Network traffic on the LAN does not go through the router to the ISP. There are things the software playing a move could use the internet for. For example, let's say you have "Star Wars" on your Samba server and you bring it up in a media player. The metadata is incomplete because you didn't populate it when you ripped it from DVD (or the pirated copy you downloaded didn't have all the metadata). The player could use the file name "Star Wars" to search for metadata. THAT traffic could be seen by your ISP. The file access could not be. Somebody monitoring all your ISP traffic could potentially figure out that you have accessed the movie "Star Wars". But they would do it indirectly, by looking at the metadata queries the media player made, not because of the file access.

What do you mean with ''didn't populate it''? Why would it be incomplete?

OK, so from what I understand, they can't see anything that I do on my server.
So they use the metadata of the file to detect wether or not someone is doing illegal stuff, yes? (Not that they would care.)

OK, so certain media players can search for metadata by accessing the Internet and then downloading it for you. (Which obviously exposes me then somewhat.)
It will for example use the title of the music file to find results, and download the missing metadata (cover image for example.) I know that VLC Media Player does this by default.

So just to clarify, no matter what I download, my ISP will never be able to see the filename of the file when I do download something, right? Just the data packets?--(The file). But not the name right? And so they detect copyrighted material by metadata correct?

Hope I got most of what you were saying. Thanks for your reply.

 

[kanewolf]

Most ISPs don't do any ACTIVE monitoring for media. If you rip a DVD, but don't populate the director or actors names, that would be incomplete metadata in a movie file. Just as you said, VLC might search for that metadata for you.

When DOWNLOADING files, your ISP might have the name of the file available. It would depend on the protocol used to transfer it. If you use FTP to get a remote file, the name of the file is transferred in plain text between your FTP client and the FTP server. I believe many torrent protocols use plain text file names as part of their handshakes. I believe THAT is what causes most problems for people downloading pirated media.

Simple solution -- don't pirate media. Tom's doesn't support any discussion of pirated software or media. This question is straying too close. You will have to bring it back from pirated media or it will be closed.

 

[may-yuhan]

Most ISPs don't do any ACTIVE monitoring for media. If you rip a DVD, but don't populate the director or actors names, that would be incomplete metadata in a movie file. Just as you said, VLC might search for that metadata for you.

When DOWNLOADING files, your ISP might have the name of the file available. It would depend on the protocol used to transfer it. If you use FTP to get a remote file, the name of the file is transferred in plain text between your FTP client and the FTP server. I believe many torrent protocols use plain text file names as part of their handshakes. I believe THAT is what causes most problems for people downloading pirated media.

Simple solution -- don't pirate media. Tom's doesn't support any discussion of pirated software or media. This question is straying too close. You will have to bring it back from pirated media or it will be closed.

Ah, I see now. I'll read into those.
- by the way, I was asking because I am curious as to what and how ISP see and go about it. I see there are a lot of factors now. I like generally to be privacy aware. Not because of pirating, if I wanted to pirate then I would have just bought a VPN subscription somewhere. 😉

You did answer everything though, the thread had already been solved, my bad, and thank you.