I use Wifi often from cafes to access the net. Can I encrypt any data I send over the net so it's safe? How?

Question

Free ways preferred :)

Answer 1

You are limited to the protocols offered by the Cafe I'm afraid.

Just be sure to ask, and clean up afterwards.

Answer 2

Not to be a parrot but , tyring to make sure that you are using secure sites is a good bet. If you plan on sending emails and such to people you know you can use encryption software such as StompSoft's Digital Vault or similar products. This way as long as the receiver has the decrypter your info will be secure. Though ideally the best thing to do is send your data from home or maybe work because you have more security control over the information then you would at a coffee house with WiFi access.

Answer 3

In order for encryption to work the sender and receiver must cooperate with each other. So adding one sided encryption would do you no good. You could limit your web use to only secure sites, but that would be less than useful the majority of the time. You can take solace in the fact that the majority of sites dealing with personal information are using SSL, so your sensitive data should be ok.

Answer 4

Using your computer over wifi in a cafe is (almost) as safe a susing it anywhere else on the Internet.
Basically you have no guarantee of privacy any time traffic passes across the Internet. You should therefore always asume that someone is watching the traffic flow. Even when using your ISP's mail servers etc.

The answer to all that is to ensure that anything you want private is either done with https (For web services), using ssh (e.g. putty) for interactive logins or file transfers, or for encrypting traffic between your laptop & your work a VPN tunnel (Using either IPSec or SSL VPN tunnels).

Answer 5

Your best bet is only to use sites where your log-in is secure. (You should see a mini padlock in the address bar) and the address should start with https:// and not http://. Some sites have both secure and unsecure logins, be sure to click on the secure log in button.

If a site has unsecured logins, either use a different site, or use a different set of username & passwords for non-important sites vs important/secure ones. You shouldn't be using the same username and passwords everywhere anyways.

Answer 6

yeab you can use WEP or WAP encrypt service for your wireless. Also have alook your wireless manufacturer website.