Educate me about wireless security

Hardware and technical stuff
1

So my work has free wifi and I can log in on my lunch break from my netbook and do some surfing. The wifi is unsecured so no passwords to login or anything. My question is when I’m using this on my netbook, is it a problem that I’m logged into QT3, Amazon, etc? Can someone just automagically figure out my passwords for sites I visit since the wifi is unsecured? Some sites use the “https” that tells me it’s secure - does that protect me?

Should I be doing something different to protect myself?

2

Always be wary of doing anything sensitive on unsecured Wifi. You can use something like Hotspot Shield for added safety, but I believe there are ways around even that if somebody is sufficiently knowledgeable and motivated. As a general rule, though, if you aren’t connecting over https (which is SSL), everything you’re doing is going over the wireless in the clear.