Do ISP and library know what we read when we borrow books from platforms, such as Overdrive, with public library accounts? p.s. first post + app glitch can’t enter new line.

  • slazer2au@lemmy.world
    5·
    1 year ago

    The place you borrow the book knows, for record keeping. But your ISP shouldn’t if you are doing HTTPS

      • slazer2au@lemmy.world
        4·
        1 year ago

        The tldr is Encryption.

        Http is known as plain text transport. Anyone looking at the traffic can see what is going on, can see your passwords, authentication tokens, credit card numbers, text of the web page.

        HTTPS uses encryption, when you first access a page with HTTPS your application and the server set up a secure channel to transfer whatever you are doing and only your application and the web server have the secrets to decrypt the traffic.

        Now ISP will know you accessed an IP that may be hosting the library website, but unless they are doing legal or illegal interception they will not know what book you are looking at or what file you download.

        IPs are shard between many sites so just because the IP hosts the library, it may also host a cooking blog and/or a car yard website.

        • meowmeowmeow@lemmy.mlOP
          11·
          1 year ago

          Thank you. Although it may be irrelevant, do we need a VPN to avoid interception (what is it?) even if there is HTTPS?

          • Haui@discuss.tchncs.de
            2·
            1 year ago

            Allthough not a pro but vpns are mostly mandatory for p2p filesharing as in most countries, downloading can be a problem, but sharing will screw you big time.

            So, a vpn secures (ideall) all traffic from your pc to the vpn host. You then use the vpn hosts isp and so on (in a country where your government cant ask for your data ideally).

            I‘m not sure how it works for https exactly. What if you download a file, especially.

            Have a good one.

          • SaveComengs@lemmy.federa.netEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            vpn for normal consumers is a dumb pyramid scheme, you can make your privacy much better with less cost with other methods. VPNs are only good if you want to see something unavailable in your country