Bitcoin Forum

Is it a really bad idea to trade on sites like BTC-E or Cryptsy with my laptop when I'm using a free public Wifi network like at Starbucks or McDonalds?

Yeah I'd say so, I'd imagine would be easy to set up a man in the middle attack and have away with your passwords etc.

I haven't heard of any attacks resulting from this, but you probably don't want to be the first. You'd probably be better off trying to tether your laptop to a phone or something along those lines (or if you're using a phone for BTC, use its mobile data connection rather than WiFi).

how about using vpn or tor?

Make sure the public wifi has VPN passthrough. Some block it.

VPN is unnecessary. SSL will keep you safe. Just make sure you are using https and you have a "locked" icon.

That is what SSL/TLS is for.

I think it's a shame that a public wifi operator would do this.  A VPN prevents the leaking of possibly sensitive data that could be observed by a hacker monitoring the same wifi network.

Best idea yet. Please let me know the date and location of this occurance. Kthx

Use a trustworthy VPN service when you are not at home.

But don't use Tor, it's very easy for Tor end nodes to spy on the traffic, copy passwords or perform man-in-the-middle attacks.

Check out the University of Tsukuba's vpn project.
http://www.vpngate.net/en/

If you're not going to use a VPN, I would suggest installing something like DNSCrypt.  If your machine is secure enough to survive any local exploits, I believe the most likely way "they could get you" is with some type of MitM or DNS-spoofing attack, given their privileged network position.

It may be that passthrough is blocked by firmware default. I doubt it's blocked by individual site operators.