Okay so today I went to a Starbucks and connected to the free wifi automatically on my macbook air (an old 2011 model running Yosemite).
Started typing a message to my friend on facebook (chrome) and as I was typing the laptop seemed to start typing something which resembled what I was typing (i was typing "im ready" but the laptop kept on repeating imimimimimim mridae mridae mridae). The laptop repeated this for maybe around 50 times repeating the word "mridae" (even affter i lifted my hands) after a string of "immimmmimm". I kinda ignored it and thought it was probably just a chrome bug or maybe just a mac glitch but I started to think abit more about it. 20 minute later it hit me that this could possibly be a bit sketchy so I disconnected from the public wifi. At first I checked whether or not it was just a case of me accidentally pasting the same thing over and over again but when I checked what i had copied was definitely not mridae... I also realised then after using the laptop for a good 20-25 minutes that my firewall was OFF the whole time. The only thing I had on was Sophos Anti-Virus home edition, which I don't think has a firewall function. Additionally I had sharing files on (luckily nothing important was in my public folder).
later on whilst still disconnected from the wifi, my sophos (for the first time ever) detected something called a "zako plugin".
okay. so im a bit creeped out like... is my laptop safe? i am mostly concerned about my data being stolen because of the public wifi and lack of firewall.
is there anyway to check if this has happened?
I've already since run a sophos scan and also a bitdefender one but that doesn't really let me know if any of my data was stolen!
does the keyboard thing sound normal or dodgy??
is it really that bad for a mac to connect to a public wifi without a firewall??
Started typing a message to my friend on facebook (chrome) and as I was typing the laptop seemed to start typing something which resembled what I was typing (i was typing "im ready" but the laptop kept on repeating imimimimimim mridae mridae mridae). The laptop repeated this for maybe around 50 times repeating the word "mridae" (even affter i lifted my hands) after a string of "immimmmimm". I kinda ignored it and thought it was probably just a chrome bug or maybe just a mac glitch but I started to think abit more about it. 20 minute later it hit me that this could possibly be a bit sketchy so I disconnected from the public wifi. At first I checked whether or not it was just a case of me accidentally pasting the same thing over and over again but when I checked what i had copied was definitely not mridae... I also realised then after using the laptop for a good 20-25 minutes that my firewall was OFF the whole time. The only thing I had on was Sophos Anti-Virus home edition, which I don't think has a firewall function. Additionally I had sharing files on (luckily nothing important was in my public folder).
later on whilst still disconnected from the wifi, my sophos (for the first time ever) detected something called a "zako plugin".
okay. so im a bit creeped out like... is my laptop safe? i am mostly concerned about my data being stolen because of the public wifi and lack of firewall.
is there anyway to check if this has happened?
I've already since run a sophos scan and also a bitdefender one but that doesn't really let me know if any of my data was stolen!
does the keyboard thing sound normal or dodgy??
is it really that bad for a mac to connect to a public wifi without a firewall??
Last edited: