I looked into the ticket and it was from last year (the last time I made a ticket) so I have no idea if I used public WiFi. I imagine I would've waited to do something like that at home, though.
People have recommended VPNs to me before and they'd probably be nice if they weren't costly, like you mentioned. It's not a bad idea, though! Question is, would it really make that much of a difference? I feel like the opinions on VPNs are rather mixed from what I can tell.