Cake
Senior Member
Yes true for the owner of the wifi ap, but you have to know your device. Example is windows os or android. The amount of connections to msft domains when someone is playing a steam game running on windows is amazing. The DNS log file on my router lights up like a Christmas tree. In linux its dead silent. A android phone with the usual bloat on it will do the same and you may not know especially since private DNS setting is usually set to automatic - not plain text port 53. Or take Firefox browser for example, the war over who gets to do the DNS resolving. They want to solely profit from the data mining and prevent the ISP's from sniffing port 53. I guess what I am saying is the coffee shop might not know what websites your going to, but there are many others that do even when using a public (commercial) VPN. As for worrying about your bank security, its https, be more worried about someone watching you put your username and password in. Then there is the cat calling in WiFi, Hello ssid "hotdog" are you there? Its me MAC xx.xx.xx.xx. Hello who is there? Its me MAC xx.xx.xx.xx - that's what your phone is singing to every device in the area every few seconds. The hotdog ssid is your saved WiFi hotspots. This all gets uploaded to google "to speed up finding your location" . This is all very interesting and way over most peoples understanding. I think these public VPN are just running sales pitches to get folks to give them there money, like those anti-virus folks and what not.
