What are the inherant dangers banking through a 3g network!

My daughter is working for two months in Namibia and the least expensive internet access she could find was 3g. I would guess it is less dangerous than WiFi but is she still prone to sniffing? There are a few details that she had to check on her checking account back in the States and may have to again. What are the risks? Thank you!

 

I'm not too sure. I wouldn't trust it any more than a public hotspot myself. If she really must check her account tell her to make sure that she is using SSl connection. I guess if you could get her a cheap trusted secure VPN to connect to she would be more secure.

 

Saying that though, over here you can buy the 3G dongles that many hundreds of thousands of people use daily to do all kinds of internet activities so I guess it's secure-ish.

 

3G (GSM/HSPA+) is secure provided it is encrypted. Older towers are NOT encrypted. The flaw in GSM is that anyone with a few thousand dollars can create a rouge tower and tell your cell phone to use unencrypted service (it's there for compatibility ). I have seen some phones that can disable this but not many. For the most part you are safe as this was only just discovered at def on last year and their aren't any reports IRL yet. Just use SSL and monitor the accounts. You could also setup 2-Factor authentication if possible or even a sepperate account just for when she's there

 

Lol don't think they have hotspots in namibia. 3G is a cellular network using a cell service with its fake internet that sort of thing.

Op when you work with privacy issues always use https. If it doesn't have https don't use it.

Other advantage of 3G because it simulates TC/Ip and some of the protocols its very secure against sniffing as you would get on other connection types like dsl etc etc. So it will be the same risks as if she was back home with the same sort of possibles eg malware and other dangerous things that's hidden on the web.
Here by us the 3G networks are popular because there's 1 telecommunication company any isp that wants to enter the business have to go through them. they're named Telkom but we call them Helkom. You have to pay line rental to them then pay your isp for data charges. Routers and landline connections are limited and expensive unlike in the US.

The mobile broadband isps there are 3. Vodafone and virgin leech of two of them coz its easier than to get a licence. Our currency is rand which R12 are plus minus 1 us dollar. Namibia currency have the same value if we go over there we get what we exchange but when they come to us they get less but anyways to give you idea what we pay for mobile broadband because its the easiest and cheapest way to get connected.
For 70mb data bundle we pay around $5
for 500mb $25. You can see what it cost to get a GB of data of the web. To make things worst were back at the mobile fake internet again coz it goes through a ARP proxy it has to send 2 roundtrips sometimes to find its destination. That's why 3G you can stack up a 100mb under 10min and wonder where the data went to. That's just browsing a couple of pages. You see about 60 percent of the data you pay for.
That's just some of the problems we have here. If she's concerned about privacy she can sign up to a connectivity service. They route paths better than the isps normally.
Where in namibia is she btw. My sister lives there. In Swakopmund to be precise.