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Got hit with a fake tech support popup in a coffee shop in Denver last month
I connected to the free wifi at a place called The Bardo on Broadway. After about 10 minutes a full screen popup covered my browser saying my Mac was infected and to call a number. I didn't click anything but it locked up my mouse for a few seconds. I held the power button down to force restart and ran Malwarebytes right after. It caught two shady browser extensions I never installed. Anyone else seen these fake popups specifically on coffee shop wifi networks?
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lewis.mila1mo ago
That Bardo wifi situation is just part of a bigger problem I've noticed. I was at a laundromat last month and saw three people all getting those same fake virus alerts on their phones. It's like these scammers are targeting places where people are stuck waiting with nothing better to do than browse. Coffee shops, airports, bus stations, even my dentist's waiting room all have these free networks that nobody bothers to secure. The real trick is they're not even hacking the wifi itself most of the time, they're just putting up their own fake network with a similar name that auto-connects if your device remembers the real one. People need to turn off that auto-connect setting for public networks, it's just asking for trouble.
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leo6031mo ago
Wow sounds like that coffee's wifi really came with some extra malware on the house...
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jamieburns1mo ago
Dude, I actually had the same thing happen to me at a library once. My phone auto connected to a network called "Library Free WiFi" but the real one was something like "Library-Guest". I ended up with a weird redirect page that looked exactly like a virus warning. Soon as I saw it, I just shut my phone off and waited til I got home. What really fixed it for me was turning off that auto connect setting on my phone for all public networks. Now I just manually join the ones I trust. Saved me a lot of headaches since then, I've seen way too many of those fake login pages pop up when I'm not paying attention.
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