I’m about 70-80% sure it was actually just someone asking for my help but I did render that assistance and I’m still worried I may have fallen for something.
Someone on the street standing outside an apartment building I was walking past asked if they could have some of my data to tell they’re friend they’d arrived somewhere as theirs had run out. This scenario seemed strange, I mean it’s certainly possible, I just hadn’t really heard of this happening to anyone these days. That said I couldn’t immediately think of how it could be a scam and didn’t want to deny help to someone if they needed it.
I gave them the name of my personal hotspot along with the password and they joined the network. It was awkward after that point because I was very keen to see what they did in case it was dodgy, but if it wasn’t, well basically I’d just watching someone else’s private messenger conversation over their shoulder. Either because he didn’t care or didn’t notice I watched and he did just send someone a message, the screen didn’t change to another app. The message was in Spanish so I couldn’t understand it. They then called the same person via messenger (I think via messenger, they raised their phone too quickly for me to verify that), their phone was pressed to their ear during their call, and I watched the whole time, so as far as I know there wasn’t an opportunity to quickly do anything bad via operation of their phone that I wouldn’t have seen. As soon as they concluded their call I turned off the hotspot.
The story is plausible, if unlikely, I find the likelihood of it being true actually slightly higher by the fact that their conversation was conducted in Spanish as I don’t come across a lot of Spanish speakers here and the few people I could imagine actually running out of data would be people on some kind of tourist phone plan with really stingy data which is something I can imagine an international student opting for which also makes sense as this took place right near a language school and an area with a lot of backpackers. They were also about the age of your average backpacker. Still I worry I might fallen for something just given the way the whole thing was conducted and the general atmosphere of the situation.
This is interesting, I hadn’t really considered this. Is my phone connected to its own hotspot? Obviously it’s connected to data, but then I thought the hotspot was a means of the phone broadcasting that data for other devices to connect to it so I didn’t think my phone itself would be connected to that network since it sort of IS the network. Assuming they ran some kind of script and exploited a vulnerability, are there general things I should be doing? I haven’t noticed unusual banking activity. It’s been only one day so hard to say if there’s a broader identity theft thing going on.
Your phone acts as the gateway for other devices on the hotspot, since it hosts the network, so yes it needs to be visible. Which services and vulnerabilities are visible exactly depends on your individual setup.
For now, no point getting paranoid or anything, but maybe keep vigilant for suspicious activity for a few weeks - it’s done anyway, just take precautions for the future. Else start logging network activity and calls and monitor, I guess. Not a security expert btw.