Sky WiFi

[Chris+in+Ashtead]

I was in a pub today where Sky WiFi was offered as a public hotspot.

I was asked to enter a username and password. I used the same details as I use to manage my Sky Mobile account on the web and it said the login/password combination was incorrect.

Do I need to set up a different account to use Sky Wifi or should I be able to use my normal Sky account login?

[TimmyBGood]

@Chris+in+Ashtead 

As far as I'm aware there isn't any 'Sky WiFi': unlike BT, Sky Hubs do not broadcast a guest SSID, and Sky doesn't have any equivalent of the BT Broadband WiFi roaming service.

The public facing Sky wireless is the legacy 'The_Cloud' service which is rarely spotted these days and doesn't require a Sky account.

Note that anyone can change the SSID of their own wireless access point to 'Sky WiFi' (or any other name) and conceivably use this to harvest account credentials.

It's also possible a small business owner with a Sky Broadband subscription was rather confused about the operation of their Business Hub.

https://www.sky.com/business/help/articles/wifi-services 

[TimmyBGood]

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@Chris+in+Ashtead wrote:

I was asked to enter a username and password. I used the same details as I use to manage my Sky Mobile account on the web

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Perhaps be aware that in general doing this is really not a good idea.

Typically a legitimate venue will publicise the SSID and wireless key somewhere, or perhaps use a system with a captive portal that requires account creation.   Using details associated with any other password protected systems could potentially see these be logged by someone who administers a rogue hotspot.

[Chris+in+Ashtead]

I don't think this was a rogue hotspot. It appears that Sky have partnered with Ember Inns to provide wifi in their pubs. I wasn't able to login with my normal Sky account password.

[caesarome · Accepted solution]

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@Chris+in+Ashtead wrote:

Do I need to set up a different account to use Sky Wifi or should I be able to use my normal Sky account login?

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It looks like you need to setup a separate account although I'm not sure if Sky Broadband customers would need to:

https://www.emberinns.co.uk/faqs#/

[TimmyBGood]

@Chris+in+Ashtead 

That's a new one on me, and not something we've been informed about.  I really hope they are using separate credentials created during a new account creation process: the risk of someone maliciously duplicating that screen to harvest Sky Broadband or particularly Sky Mobile account management credentials (which are potentially much more valuable to a criminal) remains.

[PandJ2020]

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@TimmyBGood wrote:

@Chris+in+Ashtead 

That's a new one on me, and not something we've been informed about.  I really hope they are using separate credentials created during a new account creation process: the risk of someone maliciously duplicating that screen to harvest Sky Broadband or particularly Sky Mobile account management credentials (which are potentially much more valuable to a criminal) remains.

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Some info here: https://www.sky.com/wifi

uses separate sign up

[TimmyBGood]

@PandJ2020 

That's 'The_Cloud' rather than a Sky WiFi SSID though.

[TimmyBGood]

@Chris+in+Ashtead 

As @caesarome indicates, you need to go through the separate account creation process linked from the captive portal page.

As a general principle, never use account management credentials to log into an SSID: that's just too risky.