I am using an unsecured wireless connection but I have McAfee security installed(antivirus/firewall). Although the firewall is auto and it gives access to whatever it deems suitable apart from ocassional alerts I get when it asks me whether to allow access to this wireless connection. I was wondering if this was secure enough to login to my email and also login to check my credit card balance etc. online? Or should I just not do that and wait till I am on a secure or home dsl/cable connection??

The issue with unsecured wireless is that everything you "send" from your computer is sent in plain text through the air. As an example, if you send an e-mail, anyone with the right tools can read the data being sent through the air by your computer, and read that e-mail. A firewall won't help in this situation. Most login sites (in particular banks) use secure (https) websites. This means that what you send is encrypted before it leave your computer and can only be decrypted by the website you send it to. So, my advice would be to not send out any data that is private or confidential unless it is through an encrypted protocol (such as https as mentioned before). -Ryan Adams Computer Tips, Guides, Downloads, and more:http://RyanTAdams.com

Oddly online banking is one of the biggest online theft areas. You should consider a firewall and online suite that claims that it is safe for online banking. I was suprised to find that many name brand firewalls don't support online banking as a claimed feature. "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, antivirus, anti-spyware, Live CD's, backups, are in my top 10

To be honest, I wouldn't use a public WLAN for anything other than casual browsing. As Ryan states, anyone can intercept anything you send and receive, the tools to do it are freely available on the internet and do not require any great expertise to use. One method that might help you out: if you have a computer at home that runs Windows XP Professional or Windows Vista Business/Ultimate then you can use Remote Desktop Connection to connect to it. You can the use your home computer to browse the internet from wherever you are in the world. Setting up Remote Desktop is a topic in itself, but it's not _that_ hard. I'm sure the folk here can help you out and if all else fails, Google is your friend. .D