I agree - the only "public charging stations" I see on any kind of regular basis are EV charging stations. It's been a couple of decades since I remember seeing a USB one, not that I doubt their existence.

They're ubiquitous at conferences and in many trains, planes, airports, hotels, etc. Maybe you mean something different by public but USB charging stations that you don't control are very common especially in the context of places travelers are in. They're probably pretty common in schools, libraries, conference rooms, etc. as well.

They're in basically every major airport, as well as most modern airplanes.

I thought it was a wild clickbait and didn't even go to read the article. I read it as "EVs are dangerous according to the FBI, use V12 engines to avoid hackers"

but yeah, public charging stations *for phones* are terrible.

I used one of them once at a conference, with ADB enabled on my phone. I thought it would just feed me power, as not data collection was specified on the station.

but it enabled a data connection.

So I used a public station once, and I'll never do it again.