That "tiny basket flipped over" part got me, I felt that in my gut. Same thing happened with my cheap one, my watch strap got chewed up by the metal basket edges and I almost lost a screw down the drain. I was so mad I threw the thing in the junk drawer and went back to a soft toothbrush and soap. The hype makes you think it's gonna be this miracle machine but half the time it's just a vibrating cup of water that shakes your stuff around. At least you got yours to mostly work for a few days, mine died on the second use with that weird burned smell. Solidarity on the paperweight club, man.

Over 80 percent of the traffic on the internet is already encrypted these days, so most of what you type is garbled junk to anyone else anyway. My bank app forces its own secure connection no matter what wifi I'm on, and honestly that's true for most real banking sites now. The whole "open wifi is scary" thing feels like leftover advice from 2012 when every site was plain http. Plus, think about it, if a hacker really wanted your info, they'd hit the coffee shop's router directly or use a fake login page, not sit there sniffing packets and hoping. I've used free wifi for years without a VPN and the only thing that ever happened was an annoying ad injection once. You're not being paranoid, you're just being extra careful, but the actual risk is way smaller than people make it sound.