Wow I can only say that the comments given as advice on this thread are nothing short of terrifying. I guess this is why it comes up again and again, that advice off public forums is suspect at best. OP, please note that none of these comments are expert advice. If you have any concerns at all, ask an expert and do not rely on a public forum for something this important.
As for the specific points brought up by the previous posters my answers are:
1) Paid VPN services are based on a model of trust, just like Certificate Authorities who issue the SSL certificates to the banks, or even the Banks themselves. They would go out of business if they are not trustworthy.
2) Most VPN services allow PayPal as a payment method and it is easy to create a throw away email address. Why should you give them or anyone else you do not need to personal or private information??? In the case of the service I recommended, Cyberghost, they intentionally do not ask for any identifying information.
3) re Willie Sutton, if you were to ask him which banks he would choose to rob, it would not be the big ones in the big cities where there are lots of cops around and bigger more expensive vaults, he would go for the smaller less protected ones with weaker security. This analogy applies to internet security. Target, Home Depot, Sony etc are all learning their lesson and spending money on security so it does not (hopefully) happen again. So where do the hackers go next? Easier targets, smaller companies, public WIFI etc. FYI you know public WIFI has become a big time target when Fox news starts covering it. Just Google WIFI Pineapple (the easiest tool for doing what we are talking about) in news.Google.com and see how many mainstream articles have been written about this topic and how the experts like Kevin Minnick and Darren Kitchen (nee Security Gods) have advised them how to protect themselves (hint hint... VPN)
OP although you cannot knowingly trust me, or anyone else that responds to this thread as being experts in this field. My expert advice is consult an expert in the field you can trust and trust me enough when I say, use a paid VPN service when using any public WIFI for sensitive transactions like banking every time and every place, period. And for the rest responding to the OP, I beg you educate yourself a little in IT security, and go to news.Google.com and search "WIFI Pineapple" and learn why your advise is so ill advised.
