> No, they are not. They will never be. They might be secure, but not completely... You are right in that nothing is ever "completely" secure. But we take ris

> No, they are not. They will never be. They might be secure, but not completely... You are right in that nothing is ever "completely" secure. But we take risks ALL THE TIME. In a primitive sense, risk assessment can be thought of as a product... risk = severity_of_outcome x probability_of_occurence Just how risky is it to get on a public wifi? What could happen? What does happen? Are there "safe" things you can do on a public wifi? Are we talking about giving up treasure to casual script-kiddies? Or is it only nation-state-actors that we need to worry about, or maybe jealous-obsessive hacker boyfriends? What can happen if I just leave wifi enabled on my phone? What can happen if I connect and do nothing? What are the exploits? A lot of these things are unclear-- even for "experts" on HN. In the absence of actual credible stories about the bad things that happen on public wifi, people will DISMISS the risk. Some may choose a more paranoid approach and never use public wifi, but I think that's just about as unreasonable as the opposite.