Hello,
On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:51:44 -0700 (PDT), Jon wrote:

  

On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:58:13 -0700 Bob wrote:
    

When I am connected to a public wireless access point I do not stay connected
for hours, just enough time to get my email and occassionally to look at a URL.
I am very selective on links I follow and my email client is set to only
display plain text, this eliminates many problems.  So having a connection
through a public wireless access point (which uses NAT) and using safe surfing
practices avoids problems.

Just my experience and opinion.
      

Bob:

That is interesting, I had not thought that deeply about it before.  I use PMMail so email is not a problem, although I sometimes will use my ISP's provided web mail, again I don't see a problem there either.
    

It depends what version of PMmail you are using. The old version of
PMmail doesn't support SMTPS, so this means that the username and
password are sent in the clear, so the bad guys can sniff them. It's
possible to use Stunnel, but I was not able to get that working with my
ISP. The Voice version 3.04 of PMmail and Thunderbird are safe to use
over an public AP, because they do support SMTPS.