Mail app on itouch and security

[dcghile]

Hello, I've searched and googled this question, but found no definitive answer.

I just checked my mail, to gmail, from a new itouch; I looked at a recpt from the apple store, went to Netflix, both of which have personal info, if only the last four digits of credit card. Then I was looking at settings and noticed that I was connected to an open network in the neighborhood called "VIRUS", which I'd seen plenty of times but had no idea I was connected to. Not sure how this happened. My question is this: was all the mail I read able to be seen by the owner of 'virus'? I immediately changed all passwords. Now I will look more closely at this new itouch (which I love) and figure out why I was stupid enough not to have it set to my wpa2 home network at all times...

THanks,
Dennis

 

[cwa107]

Well, the POP3 protocol doesn't have any kind of encryption, so if that's what you're using with Mail.app on the Touch, there's a possibility that someone who knows what they're doing could read your emails - of course, the same would be true on the public Internet as well.

Any website that uses SSL encryption (and any decent company worth their salt is using it to transact any kind of personal information), then you should be safe there.

I wouldn't be too paranoid about it. It's probably just called "virus" to act as a deterrent to would-be wi-fi theives.