Just keep in mine that your SOCKS proxy may not intercept DNS queries, meaning sniffers on the local wifi still know what bank you use and other things. I recommend OpenVPN over TCP, or at the very least tunneling it over the SSH link, then you know that *all* apps will use the encrypted link, including DNS.
"Binary trees are a better default table implementation than hash tables." Why should I believe that? Some explanation would be nice, or just avoid huge proclamations like that.
the only way to be 100% sure is to not put yourself at risk in the first place.