Minor win: it's fantastic for tourists. Roaming kills, and it's great to have access to free wifi (maps, booking sites, e-mail, messaging, whatsapp calls, &c) in a foreign country.
The Free Wifi in the train stations in Japan has saved my butt on many occasions :)
Agreed -- Vienna has free wifi (at least in the CBD) and this was awesome when visiting the city.
Same for Wellington's waterfront wifi! It was very helpful for quick Skype calls and looking up information, especially when internet anywhere else in the city was very expensive.
And on the Donauinsel! Nothing over drinking with friends at 3am on the Donauinsel and enjoying the free WiFi.
Major loss when "bad guys" steal all your credentials or is NYC also providing everyone with free VPN?
That requires either sending login information over http (thankfully rare in 2016) or breaking https, which is much harder nowadays with modern browsers-- most of the tricks sslstrip[1] used no longer work due to key pinning, etc.