You disable the VPN, they show “unprotected”, come on, I’m not really unprotected, why such a dramatic word, I just disabled the thing a little, I’m “disconnected” but it doesn’t mean I’m actually unprotected, the same way it doesn’t mean I’m actually protected if I’m using a VPN.
VPN-alone is weak opsec. It changes your exit IP and that’s the whole trick. Meanwhile your browser leaks entropy everywhere: user agent, screen size, timezone, installed fonts, canvas/WebGL hashes, audio fingerprint, and your extension list — each add-on detectable through web-accessible resources, injected DOM, blocked bait requests, or timing tells. uBlock + Privacy Badger + Stylus + some niche translator + Vimium = probably a globally unique signature that follows you across every VPN exit you use. EFF’s Cover Your Tracks has been showing this for a decade. Customization is identity. And WebRTC just hands your real IP over anyway. STUN requests for peer discovery go straight through the tunnel in most default setups and leak both your local and real public IP to any page that asks — VPN connected, doesn’t matter. DNS leaks work the same way: if the OS resolver isn’t forced through the tunnel, you’re querying your ISP while pretending to be in Romania. Add OS telemetry, background apps phoning home, clock skew, TLS fingerprints (JA3/JA4) — none of which a VPN touches — and the “I’m anonymous because VPN xyz” idea falls apart. Tor Browser exists exactly because the only winning move against fingerprinting is to look identical to everyone else. Anything custom is a name tag.
No, changing your exit IP is not the whole trick. The whole trick is keeping your web traffic private from a snooping network operator, ISP, and the state, all of which a VPN is very good at, and is completely unaffected by anything else chatGPT just listed in your reply. None of those things are relevant to this conversation at all. You need to understand what a threat model is, and which one a VPN applies to.
The fact that you had to resort to asking ChatGPT to reply to me is an admission that you have no idea what you’re talking about and never did. If you can’t even speak for yourself then we’re done here.