I’ve done a lot of this research recently. I’m out of town rn, but if you want to DM me sometime next week when I have access to my computer I’d be happy to put together a summary of my findings.

Freecodecamp.org

Everything starts as a luxury until the working class bands together and demands it. 40 hour workweeks, overtime, sick days. These are workplace examples, but the concept holds true everywhere. In a capitalist society things like privacy aren’t considered until someone starts exploiting them for profit, at which point people start to get serious about protecting it. And this rule applies 5x in any tech realm, as governments are notoriously slow to build legal protections in new and fast moving sectors.

All that was to address your title, which is only tangentially connected to the rest of your post. Regarding the body, companies have absolutely started to equate VPN with bad actors. Still worth having. I just whitelist the services I have to.

100% this. I’ve gotten to where when people try and rope me into their new million dollar app idea I tell them that there are fantastic resources online to teach yourself to do everything they need. I offer to help them find those resources and even help when they get stuck. I’ve probably done this dozens of times by now. No bites yet. All those millions wasted…