Because "just use a vpn" will actually hurt privacy in a lot of ways.
Discussion
I use VPN 100% of the time, I think it is a base requirement. I think it is great advice and of course choice of provider matters. Tor is basically unusable for daily type things. I do a lot beyond that but if I could only advise one thing it would be the VPN. What am I missing?
Which VPN provider are you using? How can you trust them? Do you use the same account over and over or cycle between? Free or paid?
For me I am only trying to protect myself from corporate surveillance. HTTPS does this well. My ISP will see which site I am on but nothing about what I am viewing. My communications are enctypted so a VPN isnt required.
I have been playing with Tor and find it very usable. On the lowest security settings especially, most all sites appear normally. Barely any slower I find.
Also, my ISP doesnt have my KYC so I am not worried about that.
"We kill people based on metadata" <- Actual CIA quote (I think it was Pompeo)
They don't need to see the content. Not saying you can hide from them anyways since they are fucking lawless but it gets the point across. Your traffic is encrypted in transit (if you even trust https, another topic), but even most small websites sell themselves out for some bullshit at the expense of subjecting their users to sophisticated tracking that deeply profiles you *across* sites. If they are sharing on the backend, who cares if it's encrypted on the frontend.
I can actually only recommend one VPN, and that's mullvad. And maybe obscura.io once it's out of beta and more available. Paying for anything with fiat is nearly full KYC. It gets slightly better with privacy.com but not really. Beyond that though, whether you have one account or 20, it doesn't matter because it's tied to your real IP.
Tor is definitely the best but it's slow as all hell.
Again, im only interested in avoiding corporate surveillance. The CIA and other agencies will see your traffic regardless if you use any VPN or not. If you are their target, they got you already. Tor wont even help you. If I was doing something morally wrong I would worry about my metadata. But the only way to avoid metadata getting tracked is to not create any. I think a more realistic goal if wanting privacy is to move toward not being online in the first place. Our internet isnt even available anymore. Its a censored cropped down version of the past. We dont need the internet really.