Got phished at a coffee shop in Portland, lost my domain access

Last Tuesday I was working at this small cafe on Hawthorne and hopped on their free wifi without thinking. Connected to what I thought was the shop's network but it was actually a spoofed hotspot named 'HawthorneCoffee_Free'. About an hour later I got a popup asking me to re-login to my domain registrar to verify my account. Looked legit, I typed my password and then my 2FA code. By the time I got home that night, someone had transferred my domain to another registrar. Took 5 days and a ton of support tickets to get it back. Cost me a chunk of change in downtime and I almost lost it for good. Anyone else get hit by a fake hotspot in a public place? How do you check a wifi network is actually the real one before trusting it?

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amy97514d ago

Oh man, that is SO rough. How long did it take you to even realize what happened? I had a friend get hit by a fake airport wifi once and they drained his bank account before he even landed. The 2FA thing is what gets me, people think it makes everything bulletproof but these scammers work around it now. I always ask the barista what their network is called now, and even then I use my phone hotspot for anything important. That domain stuff is no joke, glad you got it back at all.