My hotel wifi in Denver last month gave me a scare

I was staying at a place near the airport and logged into the free guest network to check my bank account. The login page looked a bit off, but I didn't think much of it until my phone's VPN app popped up a warning about a strange certificate. I got off the network right away and used my phone's data instead. Has anyone else run into a sketchy public wifi login that made you stop and check things?

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3 Comments

park.riley5mo ago

That happened to me once at a hotel in Atlanta, and I can tell you from experience it's usually best to just use your phone data for anything financial. The thing that made me stop was when I tried to load a regular website and the hotel's login page showed up again, which shouldn't happen. Once you see a VPN warning about a bad certificate, that is a big red flag that someone might be trying to intercept your traffic. I always double check the login page URL on my phone now before typing in any password, even for the network itself.

6

grant8266mo ago

Ever get that weird feeling at a coffee shop when the network name is just a string of numbers?

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richard_ross6mo ago

Totally know that feeling! It makes the whole place seem temporary, like they just set up the router and never bothered. I saw one last week that was literally just "23571113" and it felt like a secret code. My brain just refuses to trust a wifi network that doesn't have a dumb pun or a coffee joke in the name.

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