Web Cafes: Is it possible to use them safely?

Mad Mike

Will be going on a long holiday soon and can see the need to access my online stuff from web cafes. However I am worried about typing my usernames and passwords on an unknown web cafe computer. Is there any way of doing this safely?

Martyr

i would say no, but it all depends on the cafe and the management.
if you had a laptop, some cafes allow you to hook it up their network, either wifi/ethernet.
not 100% secure, but bit better to be using your own system, i guess.

Duffman

Using the on-screen keyboard to enter login details might avoid some hardware and software keyloggers if present.

Hardly reliable security but it might help if you absolutely have to use a public computer to access sensitive data.

You might also avoid malicious software by using a live linux distro but I'm sure the vast majority of net cafés wouldn't allow you to do this.

You should also be aware of whether your connections to web services are encrypted. If your email provider doesn't offer SSL, for example, then it's really very easy for someone in the café (or nearby if you're using wifi) to intercept or log your data including login details.

Not many people realise that you can access gmail using https/www.gmail.com for example. This means that your entire mail session rather than just your login is protected by 256-bit encryption

Mad Mike

Thanks for the replies guys.

I guess using on line banking from a web-cafe is a complete no-no so. Pity because I was hoping to be able to payoff credit card bills and such while I was travelling.

Black Swan

Mad Mike wrote:

Thanks for the replies guys.

I guess using on line banking from a web-cafe is a complete no-no so. Pity because I was hoping to be able to payoff credit card bills and such while I was travelling.

Banking? Not unless you're hoping to have a shared account? Why not pay your bills before you leave? Banks will provide you with your running balance. To avoid an interest charge, check your receipts from recent purchases, add that to your running balance, and pay that too. I travel a lot and have done this quite successfully without problems.

Duffman

Mad Mike wrote:

Thanks for the replies guys.

I guess using on line banking from a web-cafe is a complete no-no so.

I wouldn't say that straight away. Online banking would be really convenient when traveling, I'm going to use it myself.

It really depends on your bank's systems. Which bank do you use? AIB's online banking requires a "code card" to move money around or pay bills. Worst case scenario, if someone gets part of your PIN code and accesses your account the worst they can do is look at your statements. They won't be able to transfer funds or anything like that.

If they find a way to access your account without the card then I'd suggest that the bank would be liable for anything you lose.

Take the precautions suggested above and maybe change your PIN frequently.

Alternatively, you could use Skype to call telephone banking and make all the transfers you need through that.

Hope this helps.

ethernet

What if some café was to decide to provide free wifi to customers, buy a bog standard wireless router and disable encryption, effectively creating a wireless LAN. Imagine the customers had enabled sharing of folders and were in the default workgroup on Windows -- MSHOME [personally, I think this should be randomly generated but that's for another day]. ID theft heaven!