the wyden letter has people panicking about VPNs being useless. they’re not. here’s what they actually protect you from vs what they don’t.

protect you from: ISP seeing your traffic, DNS logging, your IP being exposed to sites you visit, public wifi attacks, basic geo-restrictions.

don't protect you from: state-level traffic analysis (wyden's point), a compromised VPN provider, malware on your device, your own browser fingerprint.

a VPN is one layer. it does its job well. it was never supposed to be the whole stack.