This is bad.

Burning off a few vacation days gave me the chance this morning to catch financial guru Clark Howard's somewhat belated take on the Firesheep/sidejacking situation.  As has been his wont, unfortunately, he showed once again that, just like a lot of other people when it comes to issues involving open Wi-Fi, he doesn't grasp what the real danger is-in this case, sites that use cookies for authentication and then transport them in the clear because all their pages aren't SSL-encrypted.  He again spouted his outdated "don't bank or shop when you're connected to open Wi-Fi" nonsense, a clear indication he doesn't understand that it's sites which don't collect or transmit sensitive financial information-mostly social networking venues like Facebook-that are susceptible to this exploit.  Any site that does in this day and age is going to have all its pages fully protected-or it won't have insurance coverage.

You've got to wonder-has anyone ever taught Howard how to use a search engine?  Try looking up "Firesheep," Clark.  Pay particular attention to its author's explanations of how it works and his motivations for creating it.  I think you may find them somewhat enlightening.