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.

You have to be one sanctimonious fucker to come onto a thread like this to berate the OP about screen time. Christ.

Never use public WiFi. It's hackable by bad actors. Same way you wouldn't make your home router public, a publicly available router is vulnerable. Hackers have software that can access people's phones etc.
I always use my data when out and about.

What a thoughtless post.was it just a dig at op?
you’re also wrong.
my hospitals new building is a complete dead zone. No calls or texts gone through as there is no reception.
No option but TOO log in too the wifi yo phone or send whatapps!

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

Normally I would agree, but I spent a fair bit of time in hospital last year. Two different wards but there was zero phone signal in either; not even enough to send a text. WiFi calling and WhatsApp (or other messaging services) were the only ways to contact the outside world.

Let the hospital know in a secure manner. I doubt if patient records could be accessed, but let them know out of kindness.

They might respond by turning off their wifi, which might be inconvenient but better than being scammed.

Oh bore off. My consultant asked me to show him my test results on the NHS app as there's no other way he could have seen them in time for our discussion. He asked me directly to connect to the hospital WiFi as there was no signal. Not every use of the internet is for cat videos and silly memes. Believe it or not, the internet is an absolutely essential tool to modern life.

You were unlucky it’s a common thing with public wifi
basically the hackers present as the free WiFi then you connect to them then they connect you to the free WiFi
so everything you do goes through them to get to the WiFi

V sorry to hear this happened to you OP. Ignore the foolish pp.

I must admit I suspect you were hacked by some different means. I’ve always understood the risk from open wi-fi - in the past, not nearly so much now - was that data could be intercepted, like a bank passcode etc. So browsing or messaging etc was safe enough even if someone else could see and read the information. I doubt if unsecured wi-fi has ever allowed a backdoor to a device.

Anyway, it’s shit to be hacked however it’s done, so you have my considerable sympathy, particularly in the unhappy circumstances of hospital stays and family illness.

I've recently had a relative in hospital and wasn't aware of this possiblity

Are you saying that @Littlebluebunny wasnt actually connected to the genuine hospital wifi? And how does that allow someone to get your bank details

This is very worrying

@Littlebluebunny I hope you get it all sorted soon, and that Barclays seem to have been quick to respond and help you. Barclays won't know exactly how your account was compromised, they are likely offering a suggested explanation rather than a definite answer.

Please don't feel like you made some kind of big mistake, hopefully the previous posts about the technical aspects to security have helped a bit, and it's a good suggestion to get a VPN for any future public wi-fi use.

Thanks for the reminder. Been a bit lax about hospital wifi lately. I go often to the hospital where there is no mobile reception so have to use wifi to pay for my parking which is only available by app! As for the poster attacking you. What is that about? I had to spend hours in and by hospital beds before mobiles and when they charged you extortionate amounts to hire a TV or phone line. It was even more miserable without the distraction. Worrying about a loved one, worrying about everyone else in the ward who are often being neglected due to not enough staff to feed, water and toilet them; hardly the conditions for getting lost in an enjoyable book!

Here's some info from Which https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/how-to-keep-your-data-safe-when-using-public-wi-fi-aZKdQ4L8sKI9
Here's an example of someone being prosecuted for this. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jun/28/wa-man-fake-free-wifi-airports-data-theft-ntwnfb

Your poor comprehension of when to use affecting versus effecting is affecting me terribly.

Yes, it seems to be turning you into a proper dick.

Did you mean to be so rude?

Thats horrific! They need to refund you, contact Citizens Advice for help.

No it's not. This was a common method of attack in the very early days of Wifi, but has been pretty much nullified by the introduction of secure HTTP and VPN's. If you are particularly concerned, you can download a reputable VPN app. This effectively creates a "tunnel" for your traffic. However, the vast majority of data you send across the internet is encrypted by default, and can't be decrypted just by being connected to a "dodgy" wifi access point.

What you do need to watch out for is that you are visiting legitimate websites. Never click on a link that purports to be from your bank, Paypal, Ebay, Google, etc. If you receive an email that purports to be from someone you engage with financially (bank, etc) asking you to click to login, always navigate directly to the website and login from there.

I am sorry about your parents, @Littlebluebunny . And that not only do you have to deal with that, you now have the fall out of some criminal trying to steal from you, and when you make a decent, community minded post on MN, it draws the bored half term arseholes to it.

Did you read the OP?

Having recently spent hours and hours in hospital, alone, I often found it too difficult to concentrate on reading.

Therefore the mindless ability to scroll was welcomed.

I am in a similar situation to the OP. It’s horrible. I have nothing but sympathy for her.
How anyone can twist her words to make this about being addicted to going online is beyond me . . .
There’s some seriously fucked up about you if that’s how you think.
She can spend hours online if it makes her feel better and gets her through her mum being in hospital.

@Littlebluebunny Sending hugs at this tough time. Let’s hope you get some money back and if you want to spend some time scrolling on instagram when you need to distract your mind then do it 💐

Can't believe the grief you've been given over using WIFI and being accused of being a phone addict etc. FFS - what if you had a job and needed to respond to your work emails because you coudn't just take 10 days off from work? Society is dependent on WIFI to function, it just is! - we are in a world where people work from anywhere and using up all your data might not be an option and maybe the mobile signal is rubbish! Being berated for using WIFI is just so pathetic. OP I'm sorry for what happened to you. It is the fault of the scammers not your using public WIFI.

Your posting history just today is interesting considering you’re so anti being addicted to being online?

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Thank you for explaining, so the bank explanation is likely not what's happened? And a coincidence that it happened at the same time as the hospital wifi use?

@ForRosePoster

You’ve made 33 posts today in this name - all since just after 09.00. Advanced Search shows that you’ve made several posts in each hour since then, so you’ve clearly been online all morning.

Not quite sure why you’re so keen to lecture the OP about the dangers of being online.

@Littlebluebunny very sorry to hear you’ve been scammed, and hope you manage to get some recompense.

Do you have any security on your phone? You should be able to stop or at least reduce the risk of hacking on open wifi by having some protection, using a VPN and modifying other settings on your phone. Check it out if you get stuck in the hospital again.