It moves the source of threat from local (eg someone around you on shared wifi) and the local(ish) ISP to remote and abstract and possibly uncaring (foreign com

It moves the source of threat from local (eg someone around you on shared wifi) and the local(ish) ISP to remote and abstract and possibly uncaring (foreign company and whoever has the resources to monitor their firehose). It doesn't eliminate threat, but it changes it in ways that may be relevant - eg with a VPN the people around me can't see that I'm surfing midget porn, and my ISP can tell that I'm torrenting but can't tell what or from where. Other torrent watchers (eg whoever goes after pirates these days) will also have a hard time isolating me back to an IP with which they might be able to get account holder information - and entities with the resources to monitor what's coming out of the fat pipes at the VPN provider probably don't care about me.