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.
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.