Thanks for the advice, Mr FB of I! That’s the same thing my very good friend the Nigerian prince told me, too, so our MUST be true!
I did take a look at the article, and that vpn bit is like any good bullshit stew: you have to start with a marrow of truth:
Why not use a VPN to encrypt all of your online traffic? “Personal VPNs simply shift residual risks from your internet service provider (ISP) to the VPN provider, often increasing the attack surface,” CISA’s guidance fairly explains. “Many free and commercial VPN providers have questionable security and privacy policies.”
So the takeaway here isn’t “never use a VPN” - it’s use a useful and reputable VPN. Go research their reputations, especially in forums that talk about things that end in *arr. Look at the countries they’re situated in.
It’s very FBI to say that you should never try because you might fail.
And how do you research a VPN? A good starting place is to look at who owns them, and who they are owned by, and you can see that with the VPN Relationship Map
If you click on an entity in the map, you’ll get a lot of information about them, including their contact information, where it’s based, who owns it, how many breaches they’ve had, how many times they’ve had their servers seized, government requests for information, and audit information.
