What does browser encryption protect me from?
The data you send over the network does not go directly to the party on the other end. It hits various points in between called routers where the data is send onwards or “routed” closer to the destination. Any point where there is a copy of your data, let’s say it is unencrypted, someone can look at that and filter it for information of interest (social security numbers, driver’s license, bank account codes, terrorist plans, etc.). That “someone” can be your ISP (like Comcast, filtering based on what type of network traffic you use), a hacker looking for financial or identity information, the NSA looking out for the next 911 — whomever. So when you visit SSL sites, your browser scrambles (“encrypts”) data before sending it out to these routers. On the other end, the recipient unscrambles what you’ve sent. The math that makes this happen is called public-key encryption. Since the data is scrambled, the parties in between you and the recipient can’t read the sensitive data.
Wifi encryption actually helps plenty, as long as it isn’t WEP. When people claim to be able to crack WPA PSK (pre-shared key), they’re actually relying on the fact that your pre-shared key is usually the result of hashing (electronically scrambling) a user-generated password, and that most users generate crappy passwords. The hashing algorithm is standard. Given a password, it’s trivial to generate the corresponding WPA pre-shared key. Given a dictionary full of words and some time, it’s easy to try out hundreds of thousands of candidate passwords and test their corresponding pre-shared keys against captured WPA traffic. As far as I know, this kind of dictionary attack is currently the only way to crack WPA.
Consider also that if you have been using the same credit card number, address, password, etc on the internet for any significant amount of time there is a significant chance that “they” already have your details I would not particularly recommend running a google search for your credit card number but you could have a look at this article by somebody who does. The fact that your hacked details are only one of a huge number available to ner-do-wells may be acting in your favour.
