Would like any feedback about doing online banking and how safe it is using hotel's WiFi. I am staying at RG in Pattaya.

im pretty sure you are ok doing it with your laptop. i would never do it from a rented computer (internet cafe) tho since they can log keystrokes and get passwords that way.

i had a friend to do from his laptop on the hotel's connection- never a problem.

Using your own computer on any network is as safe as using your internet connection at home. This is because the encrypted data sent via the hotel network is the same as that transmitted over the internet using your own connection. Once your computer has encrypted data for transmittion even your own computer could not decrypt it.

Public-key cryptography

read up on man-in-the-middle attacks, do some testing on the computer network security where you are, if it's obvious they are inept, it's also possible that using their network could result in your traffic being monitored

Ensure they have encrption enabled on there wifi network (ie do you have to enter a password to access the internet) if so like scumbag says your just as safe as you are at home. One thing that I would do is make sure you have a good firewall set up. That will hide your i.p. address and stop people accessing your laptop directly.

If the hotel's WIFI connection does not have encryption enabled (you need to enter a password to connect), then I'd advice against doing online banking. The reason is that the connection from the computer to the WIFI router is not secure. That means that anyone with the determination and some simple equipment can listen in and potentially capture sensitive data like your login name/account number.

If the online banking site is worth anything, the online banking stuff itself should be encrypted by SSL (look for the padlock and httpS:// in the address bar). If you really need to access your bank account, ask if you can plug in your laptop with an ethernet cable. If that fails, change your password and or your account name when you get back home. Hope that helps.

Hmmm, not sure about some of the advice here. You may need to enter a password to get on the hotels network but the traffic may be un encrpyted. The password is there just to keep piggy backers off the network.

However, if you are using a site that has ssl, (the padlock) your connecting is secure even if the wifi network is not encrypted.

Most hotels do not use an encrypted network as they tend to cause connection problems.

This makes for a good read:
http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/tutorials/article.php/3623061

Personally i wouldnt use WiFi for anything that you need to input a password
I would even go as far as to set up a Yahoo (or similar) email address, just for the time i was in Thailand. You can always just abandon it when you get home
Using it for banking is just asking for trouble if you ask me

Hedonist

Assume wifi (or wired connection) to be unsafe, i.e. everything that goes out of your laptop can be recorded/intercepted.

However, this does not rules out online banking, as your online banking application should encrypt everything BEFORE it even goes out of your laptop (wired or unwired). Basically you should have shared cryptographic keys with your bank central server in a way or another at home using a non-online method (they gave you a code through snail mail or in person, whatever...

If it is not the case, if your online banking application send anything unencrypted on the net...stop using it at once, in Thailand or from your home or from anywhere, it is just not safe.

But I doubt such online banking software still exists: Banks are no fool when it comes to security...at least here in Belgium, but I guess anywhere stupid banks would be bankrupt banks

Be careful in internet cafe though, there any computer can be plagued by a keystroke logger, everything you type can be recorded before it has possibly be encrypted...A small defense can be to type passwords with mistakes/permutation and correct those with your mouse, but do not depend on this for anything critical like online banking: good keyloggers can record more than keystrokes (mouse motion, periodic screenshots, ...)

I certainly wouldn't use an internet cafe for banking, that is asking for trouble.

Instead of a new email, how about changing your password before you go away. Also make sure you know your security question in case you need to recover your account.

Most hotels use WEP encryption - Easy to crack. Some offer WPA(2) and there are also ways to get your data.
Even if you are using SSL there is still the evil admin whou could use an application level firewall that performs the key exchange and pass the raw data between your client and the server.

For online banking I'd make up to secure connections via ssh on my own laptop. Unless you really know what you are doing, you shouldn't use the wifi connection for online banking. I'd rather try to use a dial up connection for that purpose (if available).

I gotta admit i used my laptop in my hotel room wherever i was bkk, phuket,koh samui,and pattaya and did all my online banking not problems in 5 months!!!

Still by the end of my trip i didn't have a cent left and credit card was maxed so i was fuck all help if anyone would have been trying to get money ...................lol.