I believe the issue has more to do with identification of an individual, rather than locating said phone. In which case, no, a VPN wouldn’t help (plus, using a

I believe the issue has more to do with identification of an individual, rather than locating said phone. In which case, no, a VPN wouldn’t help (plus, using a VPN doesn’t obscure your location from GPS, which our devices both use and transmit to the manufacturers [FMI, Google ‘find my phone’, third party ‘tracking’ apps that are known to sell precise location, etc.])