Computers & Electronics

Shady Internet Cafe Wifi

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  • Sep 9th, 2019 10:34 pm
Newbie
Sep 7, 2019
1 posts

Shady Internet Cafe Wifi

I went to a shady internet cafe the other day to use their wireless on my phone and now I am getting lots of spam. Question: can these cafes see anything of mine by using their wireless connection? emails I send? websites I visit? Thanks
8 replies
Deal Addict
Jan 13, 2014
2988 posts
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Calgary
There's a reason VPNs are gaining in popularity.........and one of the primary marketing points for them is to protect yourself at public hotspots.
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Sep 10, 2005
5701 posts
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GTA
While someone can technically do and see certain things on a public wireless connection (or any connection really), it doesn't automatically mean it's the source of your spam. You don't say what kind of spam you're talking about. Email?

Yes, they can see what sites you visit. Your actual email contents? Probably not if the site is HTTPS
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Mar 31, 2017
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Lucydezy wrote: I went to a shady internet cafe the other day to use their wireless on my phone and now I am getting lots of spam. Question: can these cafes see anything of mine by using their wireless connection? emails I send? websites I visit? Thanks
if they want to then yes. HTTPS has been compromised almost 4 years ago. They can decode this in under 1 min, then proceed to fish for your website logins
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Dec 11, 2003
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Toronto
Are you sure you connected to the cafe's wifi? I have read that somebody can set up their own hot spot using their phone/laptop where the wifi name would be similar to the cafe's name, have a key logger running, and then record everything that you're typing. I believe this type of scenario is rare but just bringing it up.

Email spams happen all the time. One week I will rarely see any spam emails (a lot of emails will get caught by your provider -> Gmail, Outlook, etc) and then the following week BAM.. spam galore. In which I mean I'll see like 5 to 10 emails throughout the day (some are duplicates).
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Deal Expert
Aug 22, 2006
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ds2chan wrote: I have read that somebody can set up their own hot spot using their phone/laptop where the wifi name would be similar to the cafe's name, have a key logger running, and then record everything that you're typing.
Generally speaking, everything before the keylogger is possible, but unless you're unpatched and the network is actively exploiting you, you're not going to get keylogged.
Most of what you type isn't even sent over the internet. With HTTPS being a thing, most of what you send is at least encrypted.
That's not to say that someone couldn't set up a malicious network and actively try to push an exploit, but that's pretty rare.
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Deal Fanatic
Aug 29, 2011
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Mississauga
With the cost of cellular data dropping (albeit reaaaaly slowly) why even risk using public hotspots?
Deal Guru
Dec 20, 2018
10129 posts
10237 upvotes
mrweather wrote: With the cost of cellular data dropping (albeit reaaaaly slowly) why even risk using public hotspots?
Maybe OP is on freedom mobile? Lol

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