WLAN Security, Is Apple OSX Safer at public sites?

Question

Hi, I am opening this up for a technical discussion for people that actually know the answers, Apple Techs please!
In the article
http://www.lanarchitect.net/Articles/Wireless/SecurityRating/
It leads you to believe only WEP enabled WLAN connections should be used, but in reality I am not that concerened about a neighbor piggy backing my home WLAN as I am concerned about some AH hacker stealing my personnal internet passwords and such, either at home but more of concern at hotel WLAN, public hot spots and now the fake mirror hot spots that are being used for cyber mining for credit card and other financial info.
My Question is this, is Apple OSX protected enough so that if by some accident you did connect it to a fake but working WLAN for internet use, can it be hacked without me knowing it? And part two, are passwords easy to get when using a 128 bit encrypted browser at https web sites like yahoo mail login, or a cradit card login site? In other words how much info can be stolen through the WLAN "airport on" state of the Mac and when is internet info at most risk? Are https login sites safe for passwords? I assume once you are in, and the site goes to http that all interent data is now easy to see? Or is the web browser still protecting it via 128 bit encryptiion? Thanks for any tech support only anwsers to this.
Ti PB 550 Mac OS X (10.3.9) netscape 7.2

Answer 1

Any time you use a public wireless access node that provides no security then your computer is vulnerable. The likelihood of being hacked, however, is probably extremely low, but you can take some precaution by enabling the built-in firewall (Sharing preference pane.) You can also avoid sending anything that contains sensitive information you may not wish compromised when accessing a public WiFi node.
Many hotels that offer wireless access are usually behind routers and/or require local access authorization for guests only. But not all do.
As for protected networks Apple recommends using WPA2 rather than WEP because the latter is less compatible with Macs and is also an older technology.
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