Firesheep lit a figurative fire under the feet of folks who otherwise weren’t concerned with the security of their data as it passes to and fro over a WiFi network in a public place. That’s good. You’re at risk whenever you use WiFi on a public network, but thankfully it’s never been easier or cheaper to secure yourself thoroughly.

Firesheep‘s threat is that it allows anyone with a Firefox browser to hijack the sessions of anyone on the same network using a few dozen popular content, commerce, and social-networking sites by snarfing cookies that pass in the clear. But Firesheep is only the easiest to use of a series of freely available tools that can extract and record data passing openly over networks. The only way to defeat all of them is to secure all the connections over which you pass anything personal, financial, or confidential.

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How to stay safe at a public Wi-Fi hotspot