[_ph_]

The article raises a few very good concerns about using VPN services, however, the headline is completely misguided. There are valid reasons to use VPN, some even mentioned in the article. One just should not consider is a silver bullet which magically protects you in all aspects. And it is good to warn about non-obvious weaknesses of the concept, especially as most readers are not security experts.

It is however important to tell users, where using a VPN can greatly enhance safety. It does protect your traffic up to the VPN provider. This protects from unsafe local networks and also from any state actor in the country you are in. It doesn't protect from state actors in the country where the VPN exit point is, but depending on which states both are in, can make quite a difference.