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DAE check their bank app on public wifi? I counted 27 times in one day and it scared me straight
So last Thursday I was sitting at the tire shop on Colfax waiting on a rotation, and I killed the time by opening my bank app about 9 times in 40 minutes. Just refreshing, checking, no real reason. Later that night I added up the whole day out of curiosity and it was 27 times, and here's the part that got me: at least a dozen of those were on the shop's guest wifi or the coffee place next door, not my own data. I never thought about it because who cares about a network when you're just looking at a balance, right? But a buddy who does IT stuff told me free wifi can be set up by anyone to look legit, and everything you type can get seen, including a login and password. I switched to my phone's data for anything with a password after that, and I turned on two step login too, which took me like 4 minutes. Now I only use public wifi for dumb stuff like looking up store hours, never banking or email. Has anyone else actually gotten burned on a cafe or hotel network, or am I just being paranoid here?
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the_hayden6d ago
Worked IT at a hotel for a few years and never once saw a guest get their bank account drained from the lobby wifi. The "anyone can set up a fake hotspot" thing is real but it's rare and usually the fake network has an obvious name like "FreeHotelWifi" with no password. Most public networks at real businesses use WPA2 encryption now anyway, so your login is going over an encrypted tunnel whether you think so or not. Banking apps also use their own encryption on top of that, so even on open wifi the data is scrambled. You changed your whole day around over a story your buddy heard somewhere. Turn on two step and move on with your life, the 27 checks a day thing is a way bigger problem than the wifi was.
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