Well, using public WiFi is a good example of a situation where there is a reasonable expectation of tampering. Point is there's no easy win if you don't adequat

Well, using public WiFi is a good example of a situation where there is a reasonable expectation of tampering. Point is there's no easy win if you don't adequately understand your threat model. If you then end up using the VPN even when you're not on an untrusted network then it's questionable. The concern with VPNs isn't state level players either. Much more likely to have a rouge admin or hackers at a VPN provider than a big ISP. They get to see your clear text connections too. Not even talking about minor concerns like the fact that some VPNs won't put you behind a NAT like most networks would. Had an http proxy running and was sending tons of spam traffic to Russian and Ukrainian (I hope that's all they were doing!) websites for weeks before I realized I had to lock down ingress traffic myself.