I've recently been giving some thought to this. While traveling for pleasure, I frequently leave my laptop behind and rely on a combination of internet cafes, airport lounges and hotel business centers for my online access. Most of the time I'm just checking email and doing general browsing. However, on longer trips, it becomes necessary to login to my online banking site and credit card sites to pay bills, check balances, etc.

Doing so on publicly accessible computers has always made me pretty nervous. Most of these computers aren't setup with any sort of access control to prevent random users from installing software on the box. It seems like it would be pretty easy for someone to come along and install a keystroke logger that has some logic to look for username/password combinations and email them back "home". And I'm guessing that the average airport lounge / hotel business center / internet cafe doesn't employ staff who are clueful or motivated enough to pay attention to this sort of thing.

Paranoia or reality? Anything I can do about it or should I go back to banking by phone while abroad?

While I'm at it, maybe I should stop checking email as well. While it's not as critical as my financial accounts, I'd really prefer that someone not gain access to my email. And I guess I should stop booking hotels / flights online while abroad as well. Armed with my ual.com and spg.com password, a malicious user could book himself a nice vacation without me ever knowing!