COMPUTER WHIZ QUESTION: Can I, right now, buy a stock on my laptop at my brokers website?
The general rule is to never type anything you wouldn’t want to openly share with anyone if you are on an unencrypted network. There are many free programs you can use to sniff packets and you’ll see every little detail of every bit (piece of data) that goes to and from all computers on that network. Emails, pictures, passwords, etc… I wouldn’t recommend performing any type of transaction or secure login on an unencrypted network. Even if you are using a secure website, the data that you are sending to that secure website has no protection while the data is going from your laptop to the web server. Once it’s on the server, then it’s safe, but your password could have been sniffed and they could just log in and pretend to be you. No matter how much protection your laptop and their server has, there is still a period of time (milliseconds) when your data is being transmitted through the air, like a radio station…anyone listening will hear it. That’s why encrypted connections are good
