My public wifi habit looked fine until a fake hotel network caught me

Tbh I used to grab any open network without thinking, especially at coffee shops around Portland. Last month at a Marriott in Denver I clicked a login page that looked perfect, but the password field felt off, and my antivirus flagged a phishing cert after I typed my email. Turns out it was a spoofed SSID, and now I run a VPN on every hotspot, even the hotel one. Has anyone else had a close call with a lookalike network name?

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wendy_wilson2mo ago

My old boss at a coffee shop near Pioneer Square used to say the free wifi was a trap, but I thought he was just being paranoid. After reading your story about that fake Marriott login, I finally get why he warned everyone, that cert thing is way too easy to miss. Now I'm the one bugging my friends to use a VPN before they connect anywhere, even if the network name looks super legit.

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