Like I said, open does not necessarily mean free. It´s like when you leave your front door unlocked - it does not mean that you are allowing anyone to enter your apartment. But regardless, make sure that you have a firewall installed and operating on your laptop!! There may be some people that leave an unsecured wireless connection out there so that they can hack into your system. Even on a bonafide wireless connection people can have access to all of the info on your computer if there is no firewall. Remember that any info that you send out goes through the person´s computer that you are accessing to use the internet.