[ezfe]

Well, yes and no. For most people, they're over-rated. You don't even need a VPN to securely pay your credit card bill on public Wi-Fi.

However, there are two cases where they are useful: - IP address hiding (something like iCloud Private Relay for iOS/Mac users does this at the browser level, VPN brings it to the entire system) - Legal protections - Location simulation

If you want to hide your IP address, this could be to stay more anonymous and less trackable, any system that relays your connection is fine.

If you want to break the law, you'll need something that has safeguards in place against that. Most VPNs do the most they can within the legal limits here.

If you want to simulate your location, you'll need a VPN with servers in those locations.

---

So really, it just depends on what "real privacy" means to you.

[5e92cb50239222b]

You forgot the most important use case, unless you're talking about Europeans and USians only. I use a VPN simply because half the internet doesn't work without it (some guy in a suit decided what you can and cannot read, and there's nothing you can do about it).

Free tiers provided by various "cloud" services work fine for this one (Oracle is the most generous among them).

[ezfe]

"If you want to simulate your location, you'll need a VPN with servers in those locations."

While I did omit that justification, it is still just simulating location.

[pastacacioepepe]

> unless you're talking about Europeans and USians only

Nah. As Europeans we're getting more and more censorship. Just think that most Russian news outlets have been blocked, youtube channels and so on. Plus until recently I couldn't read a good chunk of US news due to them refusing to adapt to GDPR.