What am idiot I've been - lesson learnt to never use open hospital WiFi again.

[Littlebluebunny]

The last couple of weeks have been a bit of a shit show.

I help care for my elderly mum who is suffering from advanced Alzheimer's. She appeared unwell on 31st January and ended up in A&E. Twenty six hours spent in a corridor saw her eventually admitted on a ward, on the Sunday night. That night my dad came down with D&V which we thought may have been stress/food poisoning. Obviously he kept away from the hospital. Sister came home from a weekend away and visited him only for her to come down with it 24 hours later. It must have been something like norovirus as they were both quite poorly with it. So visiting and advocating for mum was left to me and it turned out to be a rotten 10 days as poor mum who is non verbal and struggles to feed herself at times ended up on a drip due to dehydration which was due to the fact no one was helping her to drink whilst I was not there so I had to be there as much as possible.

It was never established quite what was wrong with mum (infection of unknown origin) so I pushed to get her discharge asap and thankfully got her home middled of last week.

Thought that was that until Barclays have contacted me today. Seems some fucker has been trying to purchase endless Just Eat orders from my account totalling £500+ and I've just noticed a £50 Just Eat voucher has been attempted to have been purchased from my JD Williams account FFS!

Barclays believes it's because I'd used the hospitals open wi-fi. What an idiot I've been. I thought I'd use it to save on my data whilst I was wiling away the hours on the ward whilst mum sleep.

I'm now spending time going through all my online accounts and changing password etc. FML.

I am so sorry. How awful to have to deal with that now on top of everything else

That is crap but a good lesson I think in how reliant/addicted we've become in being online when it really isn't needed.

the irony...

I was sitting in a hospital ward up to 8 hours a day whilst my mum often slept. There are only so many magazines, books one can read. I could have just sat there staring into space I suppose?

It really isn't. To accuse someone who has gone through what the poor op has gone through of becoming addicted to being online is pretty disgusting actually. It's as if you think she was mindlessly scrolling in the same way as a bedrotting teenager on tiktok does. She was on her own in hospital, doing what she needed to do to while away the time. Including updating relatives no doubt.
Honestly, if you're this lacking in empathy just stay away from threads like this.
Op, I really feel for you. I'm glad the bank caught it but its the last thing you need.

How does that happen though?
I use commual WiFi in loads of places including hospitals and have never had anything like that happen.
How did someone get access to your accounts?
(Hope you're all feeling better 💐)

You were very unlucky. Some chancer with good IT skills was at the hospital on the same day. Probably a kid visiting grandma! I carry a kindle with me to help avoid these situations. I keep my small spare one charged up and in the handbag. Hope things are looking up for you now.

The OP said she used it to while away the time. So did you. Is there no alternative now?

You don't need WiFi to text or call to update relatives.

See my previous post to the OP.

Reliance/addiction to being online and not seeing an alternative is a huge problem effecting not just DC but adults.

It's harmful and damaging to everyone and society as a whole.

Really that's your takeaway from this? Quite often I've gone online in hospitals to work out what treatment I should be asking for for a relative or to work out what warning signs I should be looking out for because care is so minimal and checks are so spaced out.

Or people use their phones to check in with family and friends and keep life moving at a time when they are otherwise quite isolated

We were part way through buying a house when my son became seriously ill, unfortunately the world doesn't just stop spinning at these times.

Oh the irony in being told you were pissing your life away by someone who has already posted four times on this thread! Ignore!!!!

But yes jolly bad luck. What decide were you using? I always tend to assume that an iphone is fairly secure on these sorts of networks, but I may be naive!

I once googled if you can take THC oil and codiene at the same time on the public WiFi at the airport in Doha. Every time a little buggy with staff whizzed by I thought I was going to jail.

I doubt it was anything to do with the WiFi, you were just unlucky.

My question too.

As has already been said ..OP is talking about 10 days. It wasn't an overnight situation where she was frantically Googling for advice. She said it was an alternative to magazines or staring into space.

And like already said, you don't need WiFi to text or call family members.

The poor comprehension of many posters on this thread who haven't been able to extract the information they need from a short OP or another couple of posts is a likely result of constant online/SM use which proves my point of how being constantly online is effecting us all terribly.

I didn't say she was pissing her life away.

I said it was perhaps a lesson in thinking about how reliant/addicted we are on being online.

There's a difference between someone choosing to spend time online in their free time and someone who doesn't know what to do other than read magazines orvstare into space without it.

A lot of the time you do acrually need WiFi to call /message people in hospitals, many hospitals have shite signal
Tbh I would be dubious this has anything to do with the WiFi in the hospital

Well speaking personally, generally when in hospital I am ON MY PHONE answering four billion messages about how are things/how is grandma/what does the doctor say.

Hardly an off-grid retreat mindset.

Yet now don't know what to do without it other than stare into space.

That's why it's harmful. DC are being turned into SN kids because of it and adults are spending mindless hours on it because it's become so normal to do it.
Just think is all I'm saying.

What did I just read?

Instead - perhaps you need to think through what you have just said, and why it could be offensive to a lot of people - not least the OP

I wish I knew more about these things, the lady at Barclays told me they get a lot of hackings via public open wifi's, especially hospital settings.

I have never had an issue before either but I don't want to take the risk and try again tbh.

Oh OP, the same thing happened to me in October. Sat in a&e with my husband for 32 hours on a chair. Some absolute cunt managed to steal £159 of money from my via tik tok coins on Google play. This was then taken via my phone bill. I dont even have tik tok! I fought my phone provider and Google play and got nowhere.
An expensive lesson. I won't use public wifi anymore.

Scrolling on your phone in the hospital is pretty standard, I'd think? Different if you're with a sick child you're actively caring for.

I chrocheted in hospital when I was admitted. Now that felt out of the norm as the Dr and nurses were very interested. Scrolling is mindless, easy to pick up, and put down when you're with someone who is ill. Reading, etc, requires your brain to be on and engaged, which is harder during times of stress. I could chrochet as I wasn't stressed. I was bored. It's a bit different to being productive under stress.

Maybe when one of your loved ones is laying in hospital with advanced dementia unable to articulated what is wrong with them and you are sitting on a ward that is so understaffed you don't see a nurse from hour to hour and many of the elderly patients around you are also suffering and crying out you may want to go online to messaging and talk to people on your dementia support groups because they are the only ones truly understanding your struggles. Maybe then, you would understand why I was using the internet.

I had books and magazines, as you will see from my OP. Maybe due to my stress and anxiety of having to deal with this particular issue alone (again see op for the reason why that was) I wanted to do something a little less taxing and yes, sometimes mindless scrolling hits that spot. It's irrelevant that I had decades of no internet access in my younger years. I have adhd and hospital anxiety and I did not have the mental capacity at that time to occupy myself with any thing else at that time.

Just think is all I'm saying.

Did you look at your bank account while on the hospital wi fi ?

I didn't say she was pissing her life away.

I said it was perhaps a lesson in thinking about how reliant/addicted we are on being online.

There's a difference between someone choosing to spend time online in their free time and someone who doesn't know what to do other than read magazines or stare into space