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TIL that free public wifi at my local library in Boise can see everything I type on unsecured sites
I was messing around on my laptop at the Boise library last Tuesday and a guy sitting two tables over showed me a simple tool on his phone that displayed every username and password I typed into a site that didn't have the padlock. I had no idea the network was that open until I saw my own login pop up on his screen in plain text. He wasn't even a hacker, just some retired IT guy killing time. It took him like 30 seconds to pull it up, which means anyone could do it. Now I use my phone hotspot whenever I need to log into anything in public, but I still feel dumb about all the times I checked my email there before. Has anyone else run into this, and do those VPN apps actually fix it or is that just marketing?
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sagey697d ago
Oh man I did the exact same thing at a Starbucks last year, logged into my bank without even thinking about it because I was rushing to pay a bill before the late fee hit. The barista probably had better things to do than snoop on my sad checking account balance but still. The VPN thing is real though, my brother set one up on my laptop and it scrambles everything so even if someone is watching they just see gibberish. It's not perfect and some free ones are sketchy but the paid ones actually do what they say. Better than my old system of just hoping nobody at the next table cared about my Amazon password.
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