I recently pulled into a truckstop for a break and fired up a wifi connection and logged into one of the internet providers that broadcast to the parking lot. To my surprise I got a message stating that I exceeded my monthly bandwidth quota and if I wanted to use the net I would have to pay more for bandwidth. Well this struck me as odd since I had used this particular service very little over the previous month so I did some looking into my account. Someone had changed some of the info on my account! I then made a call to their customer service and found I had logged on in Oklahoma City earlier that morning, I was in Indiana, and had been their a couple of days!

So what happened? Apparently I had gotten sloppy in logging on somewhere and had not paid attention whether or not I had an https:// connection or just an open http:// connection. Someone had either sniffed my log on or had used a man-in-the-middle attack to snag my password. I had gotten sloppy and this is what these people are looking for!
Protect yourself, always check that you have a secure SSL connection(https://) whenever you send personal info over a wifi connection and get in the habit of changing your passwords on a regular basis.

Truckstops are a wealth of information to identity thieves, so many of us do business online from our cabs, credit cards and personal info can be easily intercepted by these people. Don’t let yourself become a victim by being sloppy.

Be safe on the road and on-line;
Don Rogers