Anyone use a VPN?

[Nick]

As far as security is concerned, I use a Raspberry Pi 4 with PiHole and Wireguard VPN. This puts everything in my control. It eliminates ads from both home and mobile devices, and also prevents man-in-the-middle attacks as previously noted. The impact of eliminating ad traffic has resulted in a considerable reduction in mobile data quota usage. It doesn't block youtube video ads, though.

I use Pi-hole too, but it does very little for security - just blocks adverts.

Your DNS usage is still trackable unless you use Cloudflare or similar upstream resolver that guarantees that it keeps no records. However for true DNS security you should use a recursive resolver, e.g. "unbound"- a bit slower but untraceable and not hackable. Also, talk to the DNS servers with DoH (DNS over HTTPS) or DoT (DNS over TLS, and the TLS 1.3 or later) only.

The part of Wireguard under end-user control is normally just the client. The VPN server has to be guaranteed secure and that's only possible with a private VPN server. Just "using wireguard" means little - the end of the secure tunnel is the server... and what then?

Please note that a VPN on its own does not prevent DNS poisoning and many other attacks.

My Pi-hole is the small red-and-white boxed RPi in the right of the cabinet...