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Security Alerts - Do you disable them or leave them enabled?

Muse

Muse

Lifer
I get things like this all the time when browsing the Internet:

Security Alert
_________________________________________

You are about to leave a secure Internet connection. It will be possible for others to view information you send.

Do you want to continue?

[ ] In the future, do not show this warning

[Yes] [No] [More Info]

_________________________________________

Do you leave these enabled or do you click that little checkbox labeled "In the future, do not show this warning", and why? And, of course, what do you do about the converse situation (similar warning that you are about to enter a secure Internet connection?

I presume it may have to do with my particular situation. I'm computing at home, nobody's going to have access to my machine but me. I'm behind a pretty secure Zonealarm firewall, have NAV running in the background. I'm running Win2000 SP4, currently using both IE 6 and Firefox (getting my feet wet in Firefox). What are the real issues?
 
It's pretty easy to tell when you are using a secure connection without the pop up windows. Firefox even highlights the address bar in yellow to let you know, hence the alerts are nothing but a nuisance. The only thing a secure connection means is that you can be reasonably sure that no one can snoop on or mess with your transmissions and that the server has been approved by an upstanding certificate authority so they are probably legitimate.

In the case of anything involving money (online banking/purchase with credit card) it is absolutely necessary. In other situations it's generally desirable when you transmit any sensitive data. Someone could be reading your hotmail while you do, because that connection is not encrypted (the login is, however). If I could intercept traffic between you and anandtech I could easily read your password as you login so that is a potential problem but it doesn't happen often enough for most people to care.
 
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