I was just wondering about the security of the N9 when connected to a free unsecured public WiFi, e.g. at a mall or library?

From my understanding, the core system is based on Debian linux and having temporarily used a linux flavour before I know it has inherently better security than other competitors. However, I'm not sure what changes to security (or compromises) have been made in Maemo.

Also, with the use of apps on N9, what kind of data can I expect to be leaked/transmitted? While browsing, email etc.? Lastly, what kind of encryption is used for data transfer? To put it into some perspective, how safe would it be to do online banking over such network?

Thoughts?

Online banking would be safe if all traffic was encrypted.
However, theoretically you could be tricked into a man-in-the-middle attack on a public network. But this has nothing to do with the network being secured or not.

If your browser traffic is not encrypted, everybody on a secured or not-secured WiFi network could sniff the data you transfer.
If the network is not secured, even people not on the network could read the data you transfer.

Browser transfer is encrypted only if the https:// protocol is used.