Does Cox Share my Wi-Fi?
This is especially the case if you are experiencing increased connectivity of devices to your home Wi-Fi internet connection: you may be wondering who else is using your wireless internet apart from your family and friends. More specifically, can your specific internet service provider; be it, Cox, see or access the data on your Wi-Fi network? Let us continue reading to get a clue of what Cox can or cannot see in Wi-Fi data.
Understanding about Wi-Fi Network
A Wi-Fi network is defined as the wireless-based network in your home created by a wireless router that is connected to your Cox Internet service. This network can also enable wireless capable devices such as laptops, tablets, and phones among others to access the internet without wired connections. The range of Wi-Fi in your home depends on aspects such as where you placed the router and how strong its signal is. On average, it refers to the dwelling unit and a portion of the land on which it is situated.
You have the discretion of filtering all the traffic over the established home Wi-Fi connections. Your Wi-Fi shows what sites you frequent or the content you browse and none of it is visible to Cox or anyone else unless granted permission.
Can Cox Cable Monitor My Wi-Fi Traffic & Data?
Even if Cox can monitor internet usage, it cannot physically observe the traffic or data that is being passed through your home wireless network. This is because Wi-Fi makes a separate discrete wireless network exclusive of other homes and establishments. Even your Cox ISP or any other third parties cannot listen in on the Wi-Fi network specifically on how you are utilizing it.
But still, being your internet service provider, Cox can observe and reach internet traffic and activity when it comes or goes through their system on the way to ‘attend’ sites, blogs, and other online content. Every ISP may collect such a type of general Internet use statistics of customers in the process of providing Internet connection. However, they can not look at what data is being relayed over your private wireless fidelity network behind your router.
What Data Sources Can Cox See Through Wi-Fi and Internet Connections?
Since Cox is the provider that gives you the internet bandwidth to your home router, they are privy to some kinds of generic data on your household internet consumption habits. However, they do not have a clear line of sight to see what is happening with the Wi-Fi networks behind your router.
Here are examples of the types of data Cox can view related to your home internet service:
- Some of the bandwidth that is used by your household in a certain month
- Internet protocol address assigned with your router
- Web traffic to and from the modem/router all in one device
- URLs of the sites that the user has accessed but not the specific page content.
- Brief overview of the history of websites and traffic patterns
- Number of traffic per website domain to get a total traffic
What this means is that although Cox can look at high-level traffic going to netflix.com for instance, they cannot see the specific shows that Netflix shows you are streaming via your Wi-Fi or any other Wi-Fi traffic.
In addition to those core Internet usage metrics that are directly related to offering Internet access, Cox states that it is not aware, does not capture, and does not disseminate your Wi-Fi Internet browsing history. It means they won’t report your activities on the websites that you access over Wi-Fi or sell your Wi-Fi browsing history to other parties. However, Cox may be compelled to filter through their customers’ internet history when a court order is issued.
Of course, it is always better to keep things more private so here is how you can do that with your Wi-Fi traffic from your ISP.
Some aspects of protection: Though your ISP such as Cox cannot see the activity and traffic of your Wi-Fi directly, they can monitor some more general internet usage statistics as data travels through their networks. If you want to take some extra steps to keep your traffic more private, consider these options:
Use a VPN Service: VPN Internet service provides a consistent and encrypted connection for your traffic; therefore, ISPs cannot see website traffic details or content. As has been demonstrated, the most popular VPN services such as ExpressVPN, NordVPN, and TunnelBear can successfully obscure internet activities from the ISP. They can help to block domains, traffic, and general history from being viewed by the ISP.
Enable Encrypted DNS: Deploying encrypted DNS layers such as DNS over HTTPS (DoH) or DNS over TLS (DoT) also assists in obscuring the specifics of the traffic from the ISP. These secure protocols ensure that the ISP cannot monitor the domain name server requests you are making, thus concealing your past activities. For instance, Cox Security Suite offers the privacy of DNS encryption among the features provided.
In Private Browsing Mode: All leading internet browsers include a feature called private or incognito browsing that does not save any of the websites that you have visited on your device. What some of these tools do is enable ISPs to monitor traffic in real-time, but they do not leave any history that one can revisit or share.
In conclusion, your home Wi-Fi network is still predominantly unknown and shielded from your ISP such as Cox which cannot monitor your local wireless connections. Nonetheless, some general internet data is still visible to them as this is transmitted through their networks. But if you are willing to have better privacy, then you can use VPNs and Encrypted DNS to regain some levels of control over it. Feeling uncomfortable about Cox tracking your internet history and using it to sell it? Wireless traffic transmitted will not be monitored by others, although they may be able to detect traffic coming in or going out of their systems with minimal privacy settings in place.
Ready to upgrade your internet experience? Call us now at +1 844-349-7575 to explore the best Cox Internet plans for your needs!