wireless hot spots

[hot dog]

Its my understanding that when using public hot spots (unsecured access points) are not safe because someone can monitor the traffic between your laptop and the access point.

What about making credit card purchases using public hot spots?  Most banks and online businesses, I think, use https  (secure socket layer) for making connection to their sites so the info. is encrypted.   If the access point that you are using is not secured, but you are using https when communicating with the host, is the traffic still encrypted?

[paudashlake]

Hppts should be the bare minimum of security on an unsecure network.  If making a credit card purchace, I would make sure i had ccleaner installed and ready to go, my antivirus updated, and my firewall updated and set to block any unknown access form the network.  So yes.  It still can be unsecure.

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

CCleaner would be useless in this case.

I would never perform transactions of any sort in a public hotspot. It's much too risky. You don't know who is watching.

[Geek-9pm]

If the on-line merchant has a large operation then he would also have  an 800 number that you could try. A credit Card purchase made that way may be easier to contest if something goes wrong.
Most of the problems I had were with making a purchase on the web rather that talking to a real person. For telephone orders I keep a tape recorder nearby and repeat information the sales person gives me. So I have a record I can go back to later. (I record just my side of the conversation, its legal.)

Only order on-line
if it is something you just can not talk about!

Like Goat Photos.

[Karnac]

I'm innocent on this one....just to let ewe know.

[hot dog]

I would never perform transactions of any sort in a public hotspot. It's much too risky. You don't know who is watching.

by this, it seems that you imply that https is crackable......Is that the risk you are talking about?