The author of the post says "I was on a site around the time it was hacked and I had no proxy or VPN." How would a VPN would have saved in this situation. A f

The author of the post says "I was on a site around the time it was hacked and I had no proxy or VPN." How would a VPN would have saved in this situation. A free public proxy might hide the original ip address to some extent. The VPN would still be linked to his real identity straight away. Right?