Can we use internet banking over public WIFI hot spot

When you connect your laptop to public WIFI hotspots, the data that leaves your laptop and sent to your laptop are viewable by others. Hackers in the Public WIFI hot spots can use some network monitoring tools to view your data.

Unless the website that you are visiting starts with "https://", the data that leaves your laptop and sent to your laptop will be in "plain text". So, hackers who sits in that public spot, can easily steal your personal data such as your user ids, passwords credit card numbers etc..

When a website address starts with "https://", the data that leaves your laptop will be encrypted. So, when a hacker intercepts your encrypted data, he cannot do anything about it.

If you want to use internet banking in the public wifi spot, make sure the internet banking site's URL always stays with "https:/" from the moment you log on and till you sign out.

The below sign on screen in the bank of america site starts with https:// which mean the user id and password will be encrypted before it leaves the computer and the response reaches the computer will also be encrypted.

After signing on, the url still stays with "https://" which indicates that if we do any transaction, the transaction will be encrypted before it leaves the computer and the response reaches the computer will also be encrypted.