Well, assuming this is a reputable company, theoretically it's the same as a VPS. I think (perhaps too much) about leaks, possible ways that information I want

Well, assuming this is a reputable company, theoretically it's the same as a VPS. I think (perhaps too much) about leaks, possible ways that information I want private can get public, which is perhaps a vestige of the habits of my youth. The likelihood is that this company is just giving a free trial to sell hosting later, but theoretically they could do all sorts of poking around especially if you start getting traffic. If I'm spinning up a server on EC2 or Slicehost, I'm a paying customer of a known reputable company, I can safely assume it's in their interest to respect and guard my privacy. So, I need to balance the cost of a VPS against replacing those knowns with unknowns and I prefer to keep it simple, which is perhaps paranoid but I prefer to keep that mentality, because I know if I ignore the 1% chance 100 times, then it's pretty well guaranteed that one of those times, it wasn't something I should have been ignoring.