That's just about all I need. Vpn + privacy browser is as much effort as I'm willing to put in. Beyond that it gets really frustrating.

1. It encrypts your internet traffic in transit

Note that most sites use TLS these days, so your data is already encrypted in transit.

5. It means you're letting a different company (VPN provider instead of ISP) see everything you do. In countries with sane privacy laws (i.e. not the US) this is very often a net negative for your privacy, as your ISP will be bound by your country's privacy laws and most VPN providers are foreign (and often based in the US).

Good blog. You touch on this point in the blog but IMHO it should be one of your main talking points.

I often VPN to my home network while on the go. The overall web experience is so much worse without DNS level ad blocking.

Great article! I've been trying to explain VPNs to my family members for years and it just doesn't stick. I'll send this their way next time.

Ill always use a vpn as theres no other way to stop advertisers seeing your local host ip.

Its not sufficient to stop them tracking, by miles, but its necessary.

1. It encrypts your internet traffic in transit

It encrypts it in part of the transit, the part between the VPN server and the target is the same as it would have been without a VPN

2. It prevents your ISP or local network from seeing which destinations you connect to

True but now your VPN provider can see everything your ISP would have. Depending on the jurisdiction of your ISP and VPN, that could make it better or worse

Not everything is good about VPNs, you should check your DNS configuration also.

It does, however, make a certain level of anonymity at least possible as long as you scrub your cookies regularly, never log into the same accounts over the VPN that you were using without it, and never buy anything over the VPN.

In the end, you have to sit down and ask yourself what information you're trying to protect from whom, and how much trouble protecting it is worth. You don't want your nosy cousin who works at your ISP to know you look at furry porn, well, a VPN should be good enough for that (provided you don't use the ISP's DNS). If you're trying to conceal your actions from a nation-state-level observer, you've got a lot more work to do.

Yes, security is layered. Vpn is a layer.