Yes the narrative around VPNs is misleading and maliciously deceptive. Non-technical people know enough to know they might benefit from a VPN, but not enough to

Yes the narrative around VPNs is misleading and maliciously deceptive. Non-technical people know enough to know they might benefit from a VPN, but not enough to know how to pick a good one—out of the frying pan and into the fire! In some cases I know people who use free VPNs! In my case, I live in an authoritarian country and don't trust the government so I VPN somewhere else. I used to roll my own WireGuard setup with Algo, but found that common VPS providers are on some kind of lists that make them subject to CAPTCHAs or even outright blocked, so now I use a commercial VPN provider (Mullvad).