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.

Are you sure you were on the official NHS WiFi. I could see how someone could create a fake hotspot pretending to be it when they aren't.

If it were the 80s then there would have been sufficient nursing staff to take care of OP's mother, meaning she did not need to be by her bedside filling the gap 24/7

Also, we'd all be 40 years younger so this game of sock loving whataboutery wouldn't be had as there was no MN.

Sorry you've had some utterly twattish responses OP.

I'm with Barclays and often in hospital so appreciate the heads up to use a VPN in future.

This is the most extreme case of victim blaming!!

Are you actually serious that OP shouldn’t of used her phone and it’s her fault not the person that’s scammed her?

It’s not the 1980s so what’s that got to do with anything?

Also, when I was in hospital for hours and hours and alone, I couldn’t concentrate on reading, but I could mindlessly scroll on my phone! Having blood transfusions, chemo, infusions etc, you get through the best you can, at that time I was very reliant on my phone, so shoot me!

Maybe if they spent more time reading books they would have a better grasp of the English language.

I’m so sorry this happened to you OP and really sorry to hear about your mum.
I just thought I’d mention that when I suffered a fraud a couple of years ago, the bank asked me if I had used Just Eat or similar recently - I had used JE for the first time not long before the fraud - they said that would be what it was as JE and the other food ordering sites are really easy to hack and take information from. I am not techy so can’t explain how it works, but it makes some sense to me as you put your card details in (or I did, I now use PayPal). As you mentioned just eat, I thought I’d mention it - no idea if you use it yourself though. In terms of the hospital, you could ask the staff if they have had other reports / are aware of the public wifi having issues?
I hope you get refunded.

This ... ^ I am shocked at some of the posts on here, although it does appear to be a very small amount of posters who are bashing the OP.

I am sorry this has happened to you @Littlebluebunny Is their any chance of you getting the money back?

A company i used to work for installed some NHS wifi routers, all it is, is a SSiD off their main network services, its secure enough for general scrolling, would i use it to bank my £23m lottery winnings? no.

Thats not to say, the NHS network wasn't hacked but you'd know about that, far more likely you have paid for something online or used your phone to and thats where the breach has occurred.

If you didn't give out passwords or similar, you should get back your money back, Barclays cannot prove what happened or where.

I agree with this.

Don't blame yourself OP.

It is astonishing to me that someone can look at a post where someone details being with their elderly mother with Alzheimer's in the hospital and think ' this seems like an appropriate time to lecture them about their internet use'.

There genuinely has to be something very wrong with you to do that. Either you are someone who likes to be unpleasant to people on the internet, or you are someone who has no meaningful relationships with other humans or you are someone who is incapable of empathy. Possibly all 3. But you are fucked up and should consider healing yourself before lecturing others.

💯. And I noticed that the oracle didn't even bother to suggest anything that the OP could've done to pass the time. Just gleefully stuck the boot in.

No judgment here btw, OP. I've been where you were and the scrolling was the only thing I could focus on in the moment too (I am an avid reader but in that moment could no more have read a book than flew to the moon). I hope things have improved even slightly for you and your family 💐.

I agree, I've been done a couple of times,the fraud team at my bank said there wasn't anything I could've done to stop it.

When I had a similar experience accompanying my mum for endless hours in a&e in the autumn we whiled away many hours by doing online word puzzles that she loves. It kept us occupied and chatting and was a godsend: in fact I took out a subscription to NYT games in January in case we're in the same situation again any time soon.

Please don't blame yourself. Hospital waits are interminable and gruelling emotionally as we care for those we love in whatever way we can. It's rotten luck and sadly there are some horrendous people out there who will take advantage if they can 💐

Having spent days sitting in a hospital room with someone who has such advanced dementia they can't tell up from down, I'm not going to judge the OP. It's shit and it's boring, you can't converse with the patient and you can't leave them to pop to Tesco to buy a paperback or something more "worthy".

I know there are security issues with public wifi although i'm not really sure how people would get into your banking apps.

@ForRosePoster you are a real piece of work.

They clone your actual phone.

Do you consider making these unhelpful comments a good use of the internet?

You really ought to take a look at yourself and consider not being so fucking unpleasant to people.

Did you perhaps pay for something woth your phone or card in the hospital or somewhere close who took your card details?
Did you buy anything online while connected to the open wifi?

Consider using a VPN.

Yet here you are @ForRosePoster still on line.
Why don't you just log off for a while eh?

That's not always how it works, the WiFi won't be secure so anyone with it skills can hack in but they don't need to be in the hospital. You can also get what's called an evil twin where someone will set up a dodgy wireless access point call it "hospital WiFi" for example and then they have access to what anyone who connects to it does. Anyone who buys anything or goes into their online banking is giving all their details to the criminal

Yet here you are.

... here they are, still posting several times an hour, every hour, since 09.00.