Agreed, its a concern for me too, and while online reviews don't establish much, the static discharge risk or other failure owing to exposed contacts hasn't been reported by anyone anywhere I know of - I've only had this for about a month, so more use is required. My other thumb drive is a retractable version, so if the Tuff n Tiny fails I have the same data on the retractable version, and I start again by duplicating it to another drive. (and since I'm far more likely to lose a ring of keys than anything else, it goes without saying that data on keyring thumb drives should always be redundant with some other location).

One nice thing, both thumb drives formatted with the new Win7 supported bitlocker usb drive encryption really easily, such that the proprietary data I carry on them remains encrypted unless I connect it to one of my PCs. I use that as I travel, preferring to keep business data encrypted on my thumb drive rather than on a laptop or phone. One less password to remember...