VPNs are not snake oil. They transfer the trust of your internet activity from a place of low-trust, your ISP, to a place of high-trust, ideally a trustworthy VPN like Mullvad, IVPN, or Proton. Among other benefits. If you don't like your ISP creating a profile of you and selling it to target ads to you, you should use a VPN.

>Should I use a VPN?

Yes, almost certainly. A VPN has many advantages, including:

1. Hiding your traffic from only your Internet Service Provider.

2. Hiding your downloads (such as torrents) from your ISP and anti-piracy organizations.

3. Hiding your IP from third-party websites and services, helping you blend in and preventing IP based tracking.

4. Allowing you to bypass geo-restrictions on certain content.

(https://www.privacyguides.org/en/basics/vpn-overview/)

Mullvad is a tiny world-famous ISP in Sweden that has zero KYC and explicit zero-log policy, specifically designed that way to enable mild abuses, that also accept PayPal, credit cards, and today I learned, cash in an anonymous envelope for payments. That doesn't scream US three-letter organization at all.

Interesting handle to make that comment. I'm assuming you mean commercial VPN providers, and not wireguard (or other such VPN implementations).

I was just talking to a friend who believes that the feds poison privacy communities by spewing nonsense like this. I don't think wg0 is a fed, and my friend didn't have any proof for his claim. My feeling is that it is probably people acting like regular humans. They hear things, they have opinions and they don't provide proof or adhere to community norms. Eternal september or something. Regardless of if it's federal agents disrupting the discussion or human nature, the response should be the same—push back with proof, and demand proof and avoiding logical fallacies.

>Also. This is how they ruined any meaningful talks about privacy

There is so much noise

"Use braive. Don't use braive. Use vpn. Don't use vpn"

Then the debate spreads to all other aspects password managers, emails and etc

> VPNs are snake oil

The most generous way of reading that would be the fact that every YouTube pushing for a VPN as an essential tool just to use the internet outside of your house without getting hacked is a big exaggeration or fear mongering but there's good reasons for using a VPN for a lot of reasons and it's not snake oil.

> Exit IPs are a public information.

Yes, obviously.

> VPNs are snake oil

Huh?