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Got phished at a coffee shop in 2018 and it cost me $400
I was sitting at a Starbucks in Dallas using their free wifi to pay some bills. Clicked on a link that looked exactly like my bank's login page, typed in my info, and didn't think twice. Next morning I saw $400 gone from my checking account to some random PayPal in Nigeria. My bank refunded it after two weeks of paperwork, but now I never use public wifi without a VPN app on my phone. Has anyone else had a close call with fake login pages like that?
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kim_ramirez31mo ago
Man, that's rough. $400 gone just like that from a Starbucks wifi session. But okay, I gotta ask - did the fake login page have any weird little details that tipped you off later, like the URL being off by a letter or the logo looking slightly wrong, or was it literally a perfect copy? Because I feel like these scammers are getting scarily good at making their pages look exactly like the real thing now, which makes me wonder how anyone is supposed to spot them without just assuming every public network is a trap.
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phoenix5731mo ago
You're not wrong that their pages are getting way too clean these days, but honestly a lot of people miss the dead giveaway that the page itself loaded too fast or didn't go through the normal Starbucks portal chain. Most real Starbucks wifi pages hit you with a terms popup and a redirect, but these fake ones just drop you straight into a login prompt with no build up. Also check the certificate padlock thing in the URL bar, if it's not there or it says "Not Secure" while asking for your email and a password, that's your cue to bounce. The scammers are slick but they still can't fake a valid HTTPS cert on a free public LAN most of the time.
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@kim_ramirez3 the URL was off by one letter, bankofamer1ca instead of bankofamerica. That and no HTTPS padlock are the two things I always check now. These fake pages are convincing but they still mess up the basics.
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