Do ISP's monitor or sell or pass on your data? Yes.

Do VPN's? Depends on the VPN. Find one that doesn't and can back that up with 3rd party audits and legal encounters.

So can a good VPN protect your privacy? No, not by themselves. A VPN is part of an overall toolkit to be as private as you personally would like to be. It can help protect your privacy, that's all.

It's really that simple.

Clickbait YouTuber is clickbait...

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/basics/vpn-overview/

Should I use a VPN?¶

Yes, almost certainly. A VPN has many advantages, including:

1. Hiding your traffic from only your Internet Service Provider.

2. Hiding your downloads (such as torrents) from your ISP and anti-piracy organizations.

3. Hiding your IP from third-party websites and services, helping you blend in and preventing IP based tracking.

4. Allowing you to bypass geo-restrictions on certain content.

VPNs can provide some of the same benefits Tor provides, such as hiding your IP from the websites you visit and geographically shifting your network traffic, and good VPN providers will not cooperate with e.g. legal authorities from oppressive regimes, especially if you choose a VPN provider outside your own jurisdiction.

VPNs cannot encrypt data outside the connection between your device and the VPN server. VPN providers can also see and modify your traffic the same way your ISP could, so there is still a level of trust you are placing in them. And there is no way to verify a VPN provider's "no logging" policies in any way.

On a personal note, the common argument is VPN providers could be recording your traffic. But if you know for certain your ISP is recording your traffic and selling your data, which is most commercial ISPs in the West, then a VPN provider is a strict improvement. They may not be, but they're not guaranteed to be. And your ISP is guaranteed to be.

A) as others have pointed out this is a rather shit video

B) I fucking hate the "and nor should you" trend. Fuck off with what I should or shouldn't do, just give me the facts and I'll decide for myself.

I would encourage people to watch the video and form a conclusion based on that. The title is quite clickbaity (which you would expect from YouTube) and at least half of the video is solely a critique of NordVPN, often followed up with "but Mullvad is better". He does make some worthwhile points but they are not universally applicable. Every country has different governments and laws; do not blindly trust the word of Americans because they likely do not know shit about your specific situation. For example, nothing in his video addressed Australia's mandatory data collection and retention laws, or the multiple high profile data breaches that have occurred here in recent years.

many ISPs over here offer a ~5-10% discount on monthly bills if you agree to have your traffic analysed for marketing purposes. the last time I signed a contract I had to explicitly opt out of that. the ISP providing internet to all of my landlord's flats offers a similar deal when signing a contract, and 1. I'm willing to bet that my landlord has opted in, and 2. I have no way of opting out of that for my flat. I think I'll stick with a VPN for the foreseeable future.

What was the reason?

(The NSA think they're slick)

, said the glowing figure confidently, while blinking hard and rubbing his nose

Nice try NSA

Firstly, using a VPN ultimately consists in trusting the company providing the VPN service that it won't be fucking around with your privacy. Considering that all your traffic goes through it, that's a lot of trust to place in one company. And I generally don't trust any tech company to resist the lure of selling your data for profit for very long in 2024 - even those that profess to be privacy-friendly.

Secondly, modern corporate surveillance doesn't rely on IP addresses anymore. So if you think a VPN protects your privacy, it really doesn't. All it does is tell Google et al. which VPN provider you're a customer of - i.e. you're giving them even more data that they don't need to have.

That's why I don't even bother with a VPN. I only use one to evade geo-blocking every once in a while.