Originally Posted by calico_pie:
“With internet banking, isn't the security taken care of on the website itself, rather than being dependent of any security on any wifi network?”
No, because on a public wifi network the data is not encrypted until you connect to a secure site or use a VPN. So log in details, passwords etc won't be encrypted as you type them in. Also on public networks people can actually hack your system to see what you're looking at.
Also, you could be connecting to a fake public network (Google these they are springing up all over the place) that makes you think it's the real thing.
No one should use free public wifi for anything secure unless you use some form of encryption and even then personally I wouldn't trust it.