VPNs are often sold as a “privacy silver bullet,” but that framing causes more confusion.
A VPN does not make you anonymous.
It does not stop cookies, logins, browser fingerprinting, or payment-based identification.
What a VPN actually does is much narrower and more technical:
- It encrypts your internet traffic in transit
- It prevents your ISP or local network from seeing which destinations you connect to
- It makes websites see the VPN server’s IP instead of your real one
- That’s privacy at the network level, not identity hiding.
I wrote a detailed blogpost. Check it out.
Yes VPNs are necessary. At least when using a public network.
Even your home network can be comprimised,
Practically speaking, not really. And at that point the state has a warrant and been in your home or someone highly technical in your home is there and there isn’t really shit you can do except block physical access to everything.
The odds that someone is intercepting and mitm your TLS/SSL behind your edge is absurdly low.
Yeah, no, you are extremely mistaken: Home routers are routinely compromised.
I’m not even talking about your government snooping on you but that’s not unheard of either.