Can other WIFI users see my network traffic?

Yes, if they know what they're doing. See https://www.howtogeek.com/204335/warning-encrypted-wpa2-wi-fi-networks-are-still-vulnerable-to-snooping/ for an assessment of the vulnerabilities for WPA2-PSK (the most common form of encrypted WiFi). If the hotel wifi network uses WEP, that's even easier to crack, and if it doesn't use encryption at all (open Wifi), it's trivial.

The only way to protect yourself is to use a VPN service, so that all of your network traffic is encrypted at your end (regardless of whether you are browsing a news web site or doing Internet banking). This will protect you from someone snooping at the router as well.

Note that it doesn't stop anyone from kicking you off the wifi (via DEAUTH), but at least they won't get any of your data even if they capture the encryption key used between your device and their wifi hotspot.


Well, sort of.

Someone would wants to read your data has two options(that I can think of) to your your data. He could either try to sniff the data that goes over the air. This can be achieved by simply using a wifi interface and configuring it to run under monitor mode. You wouldn't notice a thing either, but the attacker would likely miss some packages.

The other option would be to conduct a man in the middle attack by using ARP spoofing. Basically tricking your computer to send data to his computer instead of the router, and then forwarding it to the router. He then does the same with data going in the other direction. (this by the way, also allows the attack to alter data going in either direction, allowing him to inject anything he likes)

However, Note that both these methods don't work against you if you use encryption. If you communicate with a website over https then your data should, usually be safe.

These attacks both only work if the attacker can access the network.