Packet Sniffing

Hi, I have a question. I go to a large university, and I was recently informed of this packet sniffing. I was told by some friends that anyone with a packet sniffer on their computer could find out things like people's browsing habits, passwords, and credit card information, because of the fact that the university uses a hub to connect all of the computers in their dorm to the internet. Is this true? Is it that easy to find out things using a packet sniffer? And, if it is, how can I protect myself?

 

Maybe someone will post that has more experience in packet sniffing than i do.

for someone to find out what your password through packet sniffing they would have to sniff probably more than a billion packets and read through those to find pieces of what looks like password information.

someone correct me if im wrong but i think it would be really hard for them to get credit card numbers since its in encrypted packets. they would probably do better phishing.

i think if you have a really good packet sniffer it will actually put the packets together for you.

i hope someone else can give you more information on them.

 

Does anyone else know anything??? It just kinda freaked me out because my friends made it sound like you could basically watch what someone was doing and then steal all their information. It seems pretty extreme to me, but still....

 

Possible yes, easily no, feasible no,

 

Can anyone else give me more information? I'm still pretty confused as to how easy/hard it would be to basically stalk someone online using packet sniffing. How much information does this actually reveal?