[hug]

It gives me a different untrusted ISP and transport layer encryption between my machine and the VPN endpoint. Which, y'know, you admit to later in your comment, so you clearly know what's up, but that's not exactly a minor thing. There's a couple of parties between myself and my content, and this just eliminates the bit players. Y'know, the nerds on public wifi.

And, yeah, I could set up my own VPN on a VPS I rent. They're only $5 a month. I'd just need a couple in the USA, a couple in the UK, a couple in a few different EU countries, a couple in Australia...

The service I pay for from a VPN provider is not ultra secure. It's not even above average secure. It is, however, somewhat secure. And yeah, sometime it lumps me with "known-suspicious traffic", but that's okay: What I'm doing is completely irrelevant to that fact.