4

I just read this question How does Firefox know my ISP login page? which made me think of a related issue:

On all devices I have, the captive portal is opened using, I guess, a "browser view" rather than the regular browser. In some cases where I have to enter login details to get access, I would prefer to use a regular browser that remembers passwords but, especially on phones, it is hard or impossible to copy the URL (or even see the full address) for use in a regular browser.

Is there a way around this?

Applies to Android, iOS and Mac OS X (and maybe Windows but I rarely use it so I don't remember how it handles this situation). Some miniscule solution that detects the URL you are redirected to and lets me copy it would be good enough.

d-b
  • 956

1 Answers1

2

When a captive portal is in use, it redirects all plain-HTTP requests, not just the specific probe requests used by browsers.

So when you're using a normal browser, you can just open any non-HTTPS website – such as neverssl.com – and the ISP will redirect you to the correct login page.

(Indeed this is how everyone used to log into captive portals, before browsers and operating systems started autodetecting them.)

grawity
  • 501,077