I don't think there's anything nefarious around the use of VPN by these services. That's just what they ended up being called because they're using VPN client

I don't think there's anything nefarious around the use of VPN by these services. That's just what they ended up being called because they're using VPN client software and VPN technology to enable the connection. Proxies are different. If someone was providing a Proxy service and calling it a VPN, that would be a scam (although a pretty silly one, imo). Also Proxy services do currently exist, and they have no issues calling themselves a proxy. Also I setup plenty of "real" VPN connections for businesses that tunneled 100% of internet traffic through the central office, because they wanted to be able to do DPI, etc.