do you guys think it's safe to work on an unsecured network?

[mason]

I'm staying at my sis's place and the only internet is a wireless unsecured one. Do you think it's okay to work on AM or no? How likely can passwords be stolen?

 

[alexb]

Most wireless routers have a switch built in. If she has one of those, go buy an ethernet cable and just plug in.

Are you in a crowded apartment building or what? You probably don't have to worry about packet sniffers if you're in suburbia.

 

[mason]

it's not her internet..

 

[-Matt-]

All the information that goes between your router and laptop is visible and accessible to anyone else on the network (which is everyone, since it is unsecured). Take 5 minutes and secure the network for your sister. It's not like it is that hard to do.

EDIT:

it's not her internet..

Then don't risk it, especially if you are planning on signing into something more sensitive like PayPal or Adwords.

 

[BigWill]

Secure just means it has a password. They need to log data packs from their router in order to see your data. 99% chance thats its just fine unless someone set it up with the purpose to steal someones info.

 

[subigo]

If you're in an apartment building with Internet running to everyone, be careful. I live in one myself and I sometimes pass the time by watching the traffic flow. I feel like I know everyone in my complex on a deep personal level, yet we've never met. lol

 

[Stanley]

Packet sniffing is relatively simple but the percentage of people that know how to do it is very small.
I wouldn't worry about it unless you're in a crowded area.

 

[mason]

I'm here for 4 days so pausing everything until then is pretty much unacceptable. and yea it's at an apartment. there are numerous unsecured networks to connect to. my sis has used her CC on this internet before and nothing happened apparently.

 

[Drake]

You could use it for low to moderate importance passwords for a few days. Then when you get back home go through all those accounts and change the passwords.

Its not a bad idea to do that once in a while anyways. Sometimes people just look at things and are not noticed.

I would not do FTP, login to your registar, or paypal. Those are critical. People can really hose you if they get those.

Or you could get a VPN.... Good to have anyways.

 

[amateursurgeon]

VPN is a good plan.

If you're connecting using an https connection to the site in question, the connection SHOULD be secured between your laptop and the providers server, stopping packet sniffers.

That said, a lot of sites don't implement SSL properly and only encrypt part of the traffic, then send a session cookie back in the clear. This means someone can hijack your session.

If you need to upload / download to a web account your really care about, you shouldn't be using FTP anyway. If you have SSH access on the account, you can download a programme called WinSCP, which will give you proper point to point secured access between your laptop and your webserver.