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If a friend of mine is talking to me over facebook chat, can they school network read our conversation? I don't think so but she said she talked to an IT guy today and he said they could. Just wondering..
I'm on my own network at my house, but she is on the schools network in the dorms.
I think that that IT guy was just trying to make his job sound more bad ass than it actually is.
Technically, yes, they can sniff unencrypted traffic directly from the switches if they want. However, this is highly unethical and would likely get them fired barring any legal reason for doing so. I'm also sure neither you nor your friend are interesting enough to bother snooping on (no offense of course, but there are far more interesting things on the net than random IM conversations.)
That said, I don't know if Facebook encrypts its chat. If it uses SSL then you'd be safe.
There is software (policy central, securus etc) that scans every webpage you visit for key words (eg rude words or phrases) and will take a screenshot and save the image on a server. We use this where I work (a school ages 11-16) but I doubt a University will bother monitoring the language or browsing activities of their sutdents as you will be more trusted since you are adults.