It's not transparent (or at least any more than any other means of accessing TOR). If you at all access the internet through somewhat normal means (without runn

It's not transparent (or at least any more than any other means of accessing TOR). If you at all access the internet through somewhat normal means (without running your own ISP and connecting to an IXP physically) you are placing some level of trust in a service provider. What these sort of VPNs do is allowing you to move that point of trust to another party than the one that maintains your intrastructure (your normal ISP). You do not give them any more trust than your normal ISP, but since your normal ISP is usually more regulated it is a good idea to scrutinize the VPN provider more. I trust mullvad more than my normal ISP on privacy. mullvad is also one of the few VPN providers that has not sold its product as a end-all-be-all privacy solution while a lot of others have been spreading FUD (things like saying that your ISP can see in cleartext all your traffic even though 99% is over https, saying their products protect against hackers when there is no evidence for that, etc.).