How unsafe is it to play poker over an unsecured wireless network?

[synth_floyd]

I live in a dorm in Japan and I'm thinking of playing poker but the wireless internet that is set up in the dorm is an unsecured wireless connection. Would this be dangerous to play and also to transmit my bank information over (for when I transfer money to and from the sites)? Also, there is a wired connection that I could use but it's a bit of an inconvenience. Would that be safe to use?

[Josem]

1) if you are serious about getting a decent answer, use the search feature.

2) in short, you'll probably be fine using an unsecured wireless network. of course, there is a chance you'll get in trouble, and there are no guarantees.

[ispiked]

Just because you're on an insecure network doesn't mean you can't do secure communication; e.g. https. So, as long as you're using sites using HTTPS and any sanely written online poker program (that encrypts its traffic), you should be OK.

That said, you can get into cases where someone gains control of the AP and is spoofing DNS; e.g. you go to bankofamerica.com, but it's really 45.56.18.1, which is their fake site. This is less likely to happen, though, and can happen to any AP, secure of insecure.

[Freakin]

There is also a chance that someone on the network will packet sniff, see traffic going to a poker site and attempt to capture and brute force crack the encryption.

It's not highly likely, but someone could definitely do it if they knew what was going on. Maybe.

Since you're in a dorm, it's just as likely that someone else could capture your traffic on a wired network. It being wireless doesn't expose you to THAT much more risk than using any other shared network