I thought I’d create a separate post for this. As I mentioned, someone took over my gmail account while I was at SM City Manila. The hacker erased all of my emails and sent vulgar chat messages to one of my friends.
I use a Mac, so knew this was not caused by some kind of virus.
I discovered this was a Sidejack attack. Here’s a helpful video:
So here a few precautions I’d recommend for using WiFi at public places:
1. Use a secure page option when checking your mail. Secure pages begin with https:// (note the “s” at the end of the http).
2. You can change the settings in your gmail to always use a secure connection. Just go to your settings and find this:
3. My google page is my homepage, which automatically comes up anytime I open Firefox. I changed the settings to a secure version of igoogle, and you may want to do the same:
4. Be very careful about using Twitter, FaceBook, forums, and other non-secure websites when using public wifi.
I’m still going to use wifi at the mall. If I just stopped using it altogether, the idiot hacker wins.
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