Any browsing done via the http:// prototcol or other unencrypted protocols, mcmaster can track and you should generally assume they will be tracking certain things. Depending on the network implementation in residence, it can also be possible for other people on the network (who are on the same hub) to log your incoming traffic.
Using the private mode of a browser, as suggested above, does not prevent logging all of your http traffic by McMaster, it only prevents logging of the traffic to your local machine (so someone else using your computer doesn't know what you were doing).
McMaster has admitted to monitoring and reading student and staff email accounts in the past, and likely continues to do so.
One way to increase your privacy is to browse using the https protocol. Unfortunately most sites do not support this due to the increased processing requirements of encryption protocols; however, gmail does support https. If you want to access the whole internet free from the prying eyes of McMaster you can resort to using an encrypted proxy server or a VPN. This will ensure the traffic between your local computer and an external point on the internet is encrypted and thus unreadable by McMaster. Tor (
http://www.torproject.org/) is one example of a publicly accessible encrypted proxy like service that can protect your privacy.
Before anyone comments, I recognize that you can feel safe due to the large numbers of users on the network at McMaster. If you do have real privacy concerns and legitimate reasons to believe your personal information may be targeted, the argument of safety in numbers does not apply. It is trivial for a network administrator to log all of the network traffic generated by a particular node or user of the network.
