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.
The place you borrow the book knows, for record keeping. But your ISP shouldn’t if you are doing HTTPS
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.
Thank you. Although it may be irrelevant, do we need a VPN to avoid interception (what is it?) even if there is HTTPS?
