Technical details of connecting to unsecure wifi?

Not much danger, but a hacker on the same WiFi may be able to see your activity.

Don't do anything you wouldn't want the world to see like banking or personal info.

Have a firewall on your computer.

You can be spied upon using a man-in-the-middle attack. This can be accomplished by not only those sitting around you, but by the wifi provider as well. Best to install good VPN (Virtual Private Network) software.

That way everything you do is end-to-end encrypted right on your machine and your traffic in and out looks like gibberish to anybody trying to peek over your virtual shoulder.

Not saying it's foolproof, but it certainly helps secure your connection.

the data you transmit over that wifi signal can be LISTENED to by anyone within about 500 metres. They can read all its contents. This isnt a warning about hacking its just telling you everything you type in can be SEEN and WRITTEN DOWN or RECORDED. Ufortunately even if the connection is secure, these days the data can be decrypted. It is better to buy a VPN( aplace where all your communications go VIA) and add a different sort of encryption as well as the wifi encryption.

If you used an unsecured Wi-Fi you run the risk that somebody sitting close to you can connect to your IP address and they can see whatever you're doing and take down your information if you happen to be doing anything important. If you happen to be internet surfing and doing stuff that's unimportant feel free to connect to the Wi-Fi but certainly don't do banking on somebody's public Wi-Fi. But if you're at Burger King and want to login to the free Burger King app free coupons using the Wi-Fi by all means that's not going to hurt you a bit

First, there is nothing wrong with connecting to free wifi anywhere. It's very safe to do so. With that said, you just don't do anything important on it. i.e. you don't do banking, make purchases, etc.

The worst thing they can do is run a rogue DNS on it, which means they have their own DNS server, so when you go to a website, you do not know if it's the real website, or a fake site that looks like the real site, except it logs your usernames and passwords as you try to get in. They do this for banking sites, and the like. Anything financial or personal so they can steal your identity.

People would be able to see the sites you access, but not the actual data\logins exchanged on a https website.   They can see your computer on the network, but can only access it if your computer itself is not secured (software firewall disabled or ports opened) or lacks some security patches.  Also, since you generally must be located with in range to hack public wifi there's just not many hackers who would even want to mess with it.    Generally it's perfectly safe to access public wifi on most modern up to date computers.   You can kind of make the same argument here: "Walking in public exposes you to robberies."  Use common sense, but we wouldn't stop walking in public just because of that possibility.