Originally Posted by bpratt
Keep in mind that PPTP is flawed, but its better than cleartext, and in the scenario you're worrying about you don't necessarily need to have great crypto, just good enough to get the WiFi sniffer user to focus on someone else instead of you. Just like walking in the forest with a friend, when you come across a bear you don't need to outrun the bear, just your friend :-)
It's better than cleartext against amateurs, but using encryption draws extra attention to you, so in terms of privacy and security it might end up making things worse by singling you out for targetting, but not actually providing good security against attack.