I don't really believe any mainstream paid VPN provider would do this. What I'm arguing is that, if you do worry they may do this, a VPS is a safer bet as it's

I don't really believe any mainstream paid VPN provider would do this. What I'm arguing is that, if you do worry they may do this, a VPS is a safer bet as it's much less likely that the provider will even bother. For an analogy, if your motivation for using physical storage space was to hide your stuff from prying eyes, but were legitimately concerned that a business may have an economic or political incentive to take a peek, what would be a safer bet? Would it be to use a business specialising in storage, that uses standard storage modules all in the same location, and who knows most of its customers are interested in hiding their objects? Or would it be to rent an apartment from an estate agent that rents out all sorts of property for any number of purposes?