The traffic between the VPN and the target site is anonymous because most VPN’s use a rotating IP system. If the VPN truly doesn’t collect any data, the target site has no clue who is actually visiting other than that randomized IP address.

The point is, VPN’s do work and the biggest caveat is finding a VPN provider that you can trust.

I use Mullvad. You don’t have to give them any personal information at all.

Is it as secure as it claims?

Without a third party audit, we’ll never know.

I was on the verge of deleting everything online, including my email address, because I’m with you, but at what point does the privacy movement start intruding on enjoyment of daily activity. I’ve accepted that my information will be had in exchange for a good product.

It’s not exactly how I want to operate, but also, life is too short. Ultimately, I’m on the verge of using Mullvad Browser, Mullvad VPN, and probably getting my email hosted out of some small shared hosting platform somewhere.

I think about this type of stuff daily and it’s just exhausting. The Internet has transformed into what we’d hoped it wouldn’t over the past five years.

Posteo.de has email, contacts, and calendar. You can use Filen.io for cloud storage.

Unfortunately, I have seen some CEO’s that will refuse employees using anything other than major services, like Google, Apple, etc.

I did see one specifically mention he will not interview anyone with a Proton email address because it wasn’t considered “professional”.

It’s certainly ridiculous, but big business is ridiculous.