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Is wi fi banking at internet hot spots safe?
wisemancumth asked:
I cant find information on it on the internet. Banks don’t seem to promote it nor advise against it.
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6 comments to “Is wi fi banking at internet hot spots safe?”
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24. June 2009 at 10:09 am :
I would not do it.
25. June 2009 at 2:12 pm :
Don’t do it, You will be sorry!
28. June 2009 at 12:40 am :
Coming from a hacker himself, I would say you are pretty dang safe when you are on a wireless network nowadays anyway. Routers have built in security, and all your information is encrypted anyways when sent across the network. Also, if someone were to steal your bank info, they could easily be traced.
So don’t worry about it!
29. June 2009 at 8:26 am :
If the site you are banking at is Https, and uses SSL security, you’re just as safe banking via a Wi-Fi Wireless hotspot as you are anyplace else. SSL is very very solid security.
The thing that might be a concern is that most places that have Wi-Fi hotspots have security cameras. That camera might capture what you type on your computer for your username and password.
Some one that has access to the security files/tape could steal your account. This could be true any place security cameras are in use.
Let me elaborate on https SSL security for those that are un or mis-informed. The SSL security is between the web browser through any and all connections, is encrypted, to the server directly. Every segment of traversal is ALWAYS encrypted between the client web browser and the https web server. So even if the Wi-Fi hotspot network is not encrypted, your SSL packets are. The browser has the only key that would unencrypt the packets to or from the web server that hosts the SSL application.
If you can find a way to hack into an encrypted 128 bit encrypted SSL session, even over an unsecure Wi-Fi based network, Verisign still offers a $10 Million US dollar prize if you can prove that you were able. Many have tried, none have succeeded.
A simple way to examine this in-depth. Install Wireshark and capture all the packets, while you connect to an SSL server. Even on the client that has the key for the SSL transaction active in the browser, the packets are encrypted in such a manner you will not be able to de-cipher the contents, much less so by sniffing the packets of the wireless router.
30. June 2009 at 12:05 pm :
only if you thow your laptop first then yes it will work
1. July 2009 at 7:55 pm :
Hotspots, as unencrypted types, are in no way secure.
Traffic from and to you via wifi is in plain text, and can be ’sniffed’ with simple software readily available on the internet.
Only casual surf on open hotspots.