A recent incident at Boston College demonstrates why its a bad idea to use public Internet kiosks, or browsers at cybercafes, for anything but general Web browsing. According to this article, a student at the school was arrested for planting snoopware on computers in public areas. He then used passwords gathered from the machines to commit petty theft.
The moral: If you travel, insist on hooking up your own laptop. Then, use strong encryption to “phone home” to e-mail accounts or access sensitive data.