c/cybersecurity-tips

21

william_taylor•1h ago

Spent 4 hours fighting a false alarm from my own home security system

Honestly, last Tuesday I spent 4 hours trying to figure out why my Ring alarm kept going off at 3am for no reason. Turns out a spider crawled into the motion sensor and set it off. I was ready to call a security company and everything. Has anyone else had wildlife cause false alarms or am I just unlucky?

24

gavincampbell•9h ago

Caught a phishing email before my whole team clicked it yesterday

I was looking at an invoice attachment that looked exactly like our vendor's logo, but the font was slightly off. Ran it through VirusTotal and it flagged three malware hits in under 30 seconds. Anyone else gotten fake invoices that are eerily close to the real thing?

29

jaken23•1d ago

The coffee shop in Denver had their wifi on a sticky note behind the counter

I was in Denver last week grabbing a latte at this little spot near downtown and I noticed the barista had a sticky note taped right next to the register with the wifi password. It was something like 'password123' which is already bad enough, but then I looked closer and the whole network name was 'ShopFreeWifi' with no encryption at all. While I was waiting I saw like three people connect to it and one guy was literally checking his bank app on his phone. I get that it's a small business and they don't want to make it complicated for customers but idk, that feels like an open invitation for anyone nearby to snag some data. Has anyone else noticed how many cafes just leave their network wide open like that without a guest portal or something basic?

9

mason_lee•1d ago

TIL my password manager saved me from a phishing attack at work

I used to just click links in emails without thinking twice. Last Tuesday I got an email that looked exactly like our company portal asking me to reset my password. I almost did it on autopilot but then I remembered my password manager wouldn't auto-fill the login field. That got me suspicious so I checked the URL and it was off by one letter. Turns out my password manager saved me from handing over my credentials to some scammer. Now I let it handle all my logins and I double check every email link. Has anyone else had a close call like that where a tool bailed you out?

18

lopez.brooke•2d ago

Rant: Blew $150 on a VPN service that did nothing for my home network

Signed up for a big name VPN last month thinking it would protect all my devices. Turned out it slowed my internet to a crawl and didn't even block half the tracking ads my router already catches. Support kept saying to try different servers, no help. Anyone else waste cash on a VPN that was just marketing hype?

3

the_dakota•3d ago

PSA: Wasted $200 on a VPN that did nothing for my real problem

I got that NordVPN deal last year for like $120 for 2 years, thought I was being smart. Then my neighbor's kid kept getting into my wifi and I figured the VPN would fix it. Nope. The VPN only protects traffic outside my network, not someone already on my wifi stealing files from shared folders. I had to buy a $60 TP-Link router with proper guest network settings and turn off SMB sharing on my machines. That actually stopped him cold. The VPN is still running in the background, but honestly I barely use it for anything. Has anyone else bought security stuff that was totally wrong for what they actually needed?

24

charles_chen93•4d ago

Can we talk about how much my inbox changed after I stopped clicking unsubscribe links?

A year ago I clicked 'unsubscribe' on some random spam email and got hit with 50 more phishing attempts in a week. It turned out those links just confirm your email is real to scammers. Has anyone else seen a jump in spam after clicking those buttons?

18

rowan_butler93•4d ago

My old router let a stranger into my home network last month

I was sitting in my living room in Cleveland last month and noticed my internet was acting strange. Devices kept disconnecting and reconnecting every few minutes. At first I thought it was my ISP having issues, so I called them and they said everything looked fine on their end. Then I checked my router admin page and saw a device listed I did not recognize connected to my wifi. Turns out I had been using the default admin password for years on my old Netgear router and never thought to change it. A neighbor or someone nearby must have guessed it with some simple tool. I changed the password to something long and random, turned on WPA3 encryption, and disabled WPS immediately. Has anyone else dealt with neighbors mooching wifi this way without noticing for a while?

2

alices16•5d ago

Am I the only one who spent 3 days fighting a fake 2FA problem?

I spent 72 hours locked out of my email because a password manager autofilled an old backup code and I kept calling my phone company instead of checking the app. Turns out the 2FA was a simple push notification but my browser kept showing a code input screen that didn't match. Has anyone else had a security fix actually make things way harder than it should be?

19

miam11•7d ago

Switched from LastPass to Bitwarden last month and it is way simpler

I was paying $36 a year for LastPass and got tired of the constant breach news. Moved all my passwords over to Bitwarden in like 20 minutes, and the free tier does everything I need. Anyone else make the jump and notice a difference?

1

the_fiona•7d ago

Public wifi at my local coffee shop was leaking data like a sieve

I stopped into Brew Lab downtown for an hour yesterday and noticed their guest network asked for my full email and phone number before connecting. When I looked closer, I saw the login page was running on an old HTTP version that sent all the data in plain text. Do you guys ever report stuff like this or just avoid the wifi and move on?

17

anna758•10d ago

That free password manager I ignored for years finally won me over

I was using sticky notes on my monitor until last year in Atlanta. My buddy showed me Bitwarden and I gave it a shot, now I sleep better knowing my 47 logins aren't written on Post-Its. Anyone else switch after being stubborn about something simple?

34

lee733•11d ago

Still mad about that phishing training at my old job in Phoenix

This IT guy literally laughed at me in front of 20 people when I couldn't spot a fake login page during a test last year, said "it's so obvious" like I was stupid. I had been working there 6 months and nobody ever showed us what to look for besides "don't click links." Has anyone else had a security trainer totally humiliate them instead of actually helping?

0

the_beth•11d ago

My IT guy swore I didn't need 2FA, said it was overkill for a small operation

Back in March my friend's brother who does IT on the side told me a simple password was enough for my 5 person business. He said two-factor authentication just slows things down and nobody would bother hacking a tiny plumbing company. Fast forward to last week and someone got into my email through a phishing link and sent fake invoices to 12 customers. Lost about $800 in wire transfers before I caught it and now I'm dealing with angry clients. How do you even explain that kind of oversight to someone who trusted you?

16

kai_bennett•12d ago

I finally stopped reusing passwords after my email got hit

My email got flooded with password reset requests one morning last week and that's when I realized someone had cracked my old Netflix login. Turns out I was using the same password for 12 different accounts and now I'm going through and changing every single one. Anyone else get caught sleeping on password managers until something bad happened?

2

henry_palmer24•12d ago

Lost 8 hours because of a hidden default setting in my firewall

I spent an entire Saturday last month trying to figure out why my home server kept dropping connections every 10 minutes. Turned out the firewall on my router had a default setting that blocked ICMP packets after a certain threshold. I must have rebooted that thing 15 times before I thought to look at the actual config file. The problem was right there in black and white, but the web interface didn't even show that setting. Who has time to dig through a command line for basic troubleshooting? I'm still annoyed that a product aimed at "easy setup" would hide something so crucial. Has anyone else dealt with a router that just silently killed your traffic like that?

3

miam11•14d ago

Found a way to spot phishing emails without even reading them

I kept almost falling for those fake 'your package has been held' emails so I started looking at the sender address first. 9 times out of 10 its a bunch of random letters followed by @gmail or something weird. Now I just glance at the sender field and delete without opening. Anyone got a better quick trick for spotting scams?

21

elliotr39•16d ago

My buddy who works at a cloud provider told me turning off 2FA was fine for my test server

Got hit with a crypto miner within 48 hours that burned through $200 of compute credits before I noticed, has anyone else trusted bad advice from someone who should know better?

29

cameron_owens49•19d ago

My mom almost got phished by a fake 'Netflix' email with a typo in the sender address

She forwarded me an email saying her account was on hold and she needed to click a link to verify payment. I pointed out the sender was "netfl1x-support" not "netflix" and she still almost fell for it because the logo looked legit. This happened last Tuesday and it got me thinking how easy it is for anyone to miss those small details. Did you guys ever catch a scam just because of a weird spelling or character swap in the email address?

24

mark676•21d ago

Password managers: used to swear by browser saving, now I'm second guessing everything

For years I just let Chrome save all my passwords... figured it was fine since I had a strong master password on my laptop. Then about 8 months ago a buddy in a truck stop diner told me his brother got hit by a credential stealer that pulled all his saved browser passwords at once. So I switched to Bitwarden and set up 2FA on everything, even my old trucking dispatch account. Anybody else make the swap and feel like they dodged a bullet, or do you still trust the built-in browser stuff?

26

the_ruby•22d ago

Lost $200 on a VPN subscription that didn't actually protect me

I signed up for FastVPN last year because it was only $50 for a whole year. Turns out they logged my data and sold it to advertisers anyway. Found out when I checked my router logs and saw constant traffic to ad servers even with the VPN on. Anyone else get burned by a cheap VPN that claimed to be no-log?

-1

alices16•23d ago

Caught myself using the same password for 5 years after a data breach email

I got an email from Have I Been Pwned saying my email was in a breach from some random forum I forgot I even joined. Turned out I had been using that same password for my bank account, my work login, and like three other things without even thinking. How do you guys even keep track of all the different passwords without going insane?

4

felix155•24d ago

Finally locked my home router down after a neighbor joked about using my WiFi for 2 years

I set up a guest network and a strong password last week, and my internet speed jumped from 15 Mbps to 45 Mbps because I think four devices got kicked off - has anyone else found old devices piggybacking on their network?

17

ryan719•25d ago

Forgot to update a plugin and paid the price Monday morning

I manage a small ecommerce site for a local shop in Austin. Last Monday I woke up to find the site was redirecting to some spam page about weight loss pills. Turns out I had ignored a WordPress plugin update for about 3 months. The hacker exploited a known vulnerability in the WooCommerce plugin, and it took me 6 hours to restore from a backup and patch everything. Has anyone else had a close call like this from putting off updates?

11

baker.ben•1mo ago

I finally cracked a phishing email thanks to one tiny detail from an IT guy

My coworker Dave in IT once told me to always check the actual sender address, not just the display name. I laughed it off until last month when I got an email that looked exactly like our CEO's urgent request for a wire transfer. The display name said 'CEO John Miller' but the real address was some random Gmail account. I almost fell for it, but Dave's advice stopped me cold. Has anyone else had a close call like that recently?