What can I do to prevent this in the future?
If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware.
If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices.
Article source: https://therealdeal.com/sanfrancisco/2022/03/31/sf-developer-pays-72m-for-struggling-silicon-valley-shopping-center-plans-labs/