[quote=spdrun]Unnecessarily alarmist. It’s only an issue if you’re sending info or viewing private info, not just viewing public info.[/quote]
Not true. Someone in between you and a non-encrypted site can modify the code in any way they see fit, including injecting ads, or worse, malware/keyloggers/etc. Any public wifi is susceptible to this if you’re not viewing encrypted content.
How do you know that this or any non-SSL site hasn’t been modified between the data center and your browser? You don’t. Because it’s not encrypted.
Middlemen can’t modify encrypted content, which is why you need SSL even on “public” sites.
SSL certs are basically free now (https://letsencrypt.org/) and all technical arguments against them (take up CPU cycles, browsers don’t support them) are irrelevant on today’s hardware/browsers.