Your router can show you which devices are secretly uploading your data

Published Nov 3, 2026, 5:30 PM EST Monica J. White is a journalist with over a decade of experience in covering technology. She built her first PC nearly 20 years ago, and she has since built and tested dozens of PCs. PC hardware is her main beat, and graphics cards and the GPU market at large are her main area of interest, but she has written thousands of articles covering everything related to PCs, laptops, handhelds, and peripherals. From GPUs and CPUs to headsets and software, Monica's always willing to geek out over all things related to computing. Outside of her work with How-To Geek, Monica contributes to TechRadar, PC Gamer, Tom's Guide, Laptop Mag, SlashGear, Whop, and Digital Trends, among others. Her ultimate goal is to make PC gaming and computing approachable and fun to any audience. Monica spends a lot of time elbow-deep in her PC case, as she's always making upgrades, testing something, or plotting out her next build. She's the go-to tech support person in her immediate circle, so she's never out of things to do. Whenever she has spare time, you'll find her gaming until the early hours and hanging out with her dog. You don't have to be obsessed with privacy and cybersecurity to worry about your data. These days, data is a hot commodity, and you want to have as much control over yours as possible. Some of it is hard to avoid; for instance, your ISP probably knows more about you than you think. But sometimes, a rogue device might be oversharing, and you definitely want to know when that's the case. Start with your router's connected-device list You need to know who's on your network before you can investigate Credit: Jerome Thomas / How-To GeekCredit: Ismar Hrnjicevic / How-To Geek So, if you're bothered by the idea that some devices might be sending data out, and perhaps not just into the void, then it's time to do something about it. Before you can start doing the figuring out, though, you need to know exactly what's connected to your network. Fortunately, your router should be keeping tabs on that. To find that information, start by logging into the router's admin panel by typing something like 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1 into your browser or using your router's companion app. From there, look for a section called Connected Devices, Clients, Device List, or Network Map. I'm sure that parts of that list (if not all of it) won't surprise you. You should find the usual suspects, such as your PC, phone, TV, and consoles, assuming you have any. There'll also be plenty of smart home gadgets if you own them and keep them on the same network. Depending on your router, the information should be rather comprehensive, with local IP addresses, MAC addresses, and sometimes even manufacturers. If something looks unfamiliar at this stage, it's not yet the time to panic. Randomized MAC addresses and generic device names can make perfectly legitimate devices look borderline dodgy. Find out which devices are actually uploading data Your router might already have a built-in traffic monitor Just because a device shows up in that list of suspects doesn't necessarily mean it's up to something nefarious. In fact, even if it is uploading data, that still doesn't have to be super incriminating. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The bottom line is that yes, you should find out what each device is doing if you can find it on your network. Many modern routers have some kind of built-in traffic monitoring feature, although how much info you get depends on the model. Look for settings like Traffic Analyzer, Bandwidth Monitor, or Traffic Usage. What you're really looking for is upload traffic, so check which devices are sending the most data, both when they're actively being used and when they're supposed to be semi-idle. Pay attention to whether you're looking at live speeds in Mbps or total data transferred in MB or GB, because those tell you different things. Some routers can even reveal where the data is going Traffic logs can tell you more than upload speeds alone Knowing that a device is actively uploading data is one thing, but wouldn't it be nice to know where that data goes? After all, it can be perfectly innocent. For instance, cloud backups and security cameras can generate plenty of legitimate traffic that can look ever-so-shady when you take a quick look. Many advanced routers and security gateways will show you traffic logs with destination IP addresses, domains, and even application categories. All of this is useful info if you're trying to figure out what it is that your devices are constantly connecting to. For example, supported UniFi gateways have a Traffic Flows feature under Insights > Flows. In there, you can investigate network connections complete with the amount of data transferred and the addresses involved. Cool stuff. If you spot a connection you're 100% sure you don't recognize, you can investigate the IP address or domain to find out which service might be responsible. Just remember that knowing where the data goes isn't the same thing as knowing what data goes. You'll just know who and when, but not what, provided your router lets you. Your router doesn't show enough? You still have options Windows tools and DNS logging can help fill in the gaps Unfortunately, not all routers are very forthcoming with information. If you're renting a router from your ISP or simply using a less advanced model, none of that extra context may ever be available to you. That doesn't mean you're out of options, though. If you're on Windows, press Win + R, type resmon, and open the Network tab in Resource Monitor. Under Porcesses with Network Activity, you can sort by Send (B/sec) to see which applications are actively uploading data. Microsoft's free TCPView is another useful tool for checking which remote addresses those applications connect to. And for network-wide monitoring, there's always the option of setting up Pi-hole. Not every unexpected upload is something to worry about Know when to investigate further and when to leave things alone I'm not here to make you run around disconnecting everything left and right. The truth is that plenty of perfectly legit activities involve uploading data, so there will be many devices with some sort of activity on your network if you go digging the way I described above. Your phone is probably syncing photos, for instance. Your security camera uploads footage on the regular. Windows updates also appear with frustrating regularity, often running in the background without you even knowing (although my PC does seem to slow down about seven times out of 10 when this happens). Instead of worrying about any and all traffic, pay attention to unusually large transfers, sustained uploads when a device should be idle, or repeated connections to destinations that you didn't expect to see there. Your router knows more about your devices than you might think You probably won't uncover any mysteries of the universe by digging through your router's traffic logs, but you might be surprised by just how much your devices communicate with the outside world. Even basic monitoring can help you understand which gadgets are using up your bandwidth, and more importantly, why.