Passwords and Data at Risk
Passwords and data are at risk because of the practice from traffic interceptions like sniffing. This has been established by earlier studies with commuters who maliciously access sensitive data and information through public Wi-Fi provided by businesses, including those that are free, unreliable, or unsafe ("The perils of public wireless networks", 2017). Moreover, visitors may be vulnerable to potential attacks like sslstrip, which hijacks HTTP-type connections (Cheng et al., 2010).
Unencrypted Public Wi-Fi Networks
I've found that most public Wi-Fi networks are readily available and frequently not encrypted. One can tell this because there is no need to enter passphrases during the connections. Matters of private concern such as sensitive passwords and the access to online banking services becomes difficult to conduct because, in such a network, the traffic is visible to every user in range.
References
Cheng, K., Gao, M., & Guo, R. (2010, April). Analysis and research on HTTPS hijacking attacks. In Networks Security Wireless Communications and Trusted Computing (NSWCTC), 2010 Second International Conference on (Vol. 2, pp. 223-226). IEEE.
The perils of public wireless networks. (2017). YouTube. Retrieved 8 September 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqUGjZZuwJk
