Despite how VPNs are often marketed, they do not make a person absolutely anonymous online. They only disguise your traffic to some third parties. A VPN will not stop services like Google or Amazon from recognizing you if you sign into their services, and VPNs also cannot stop the types of invasive data fingerprinting or web tracking technologies that are pretty good at guessing who you are without your knowledge or participation. VPNs are just one tool among many to protect your online privacy.
And they are a tool that requires you to trust the provider of the VPN service, which can be easier said than done. Trust, or lack thereof, is a huge problem in the world of VPNs. Even the Federal Trade Commission has basically suggested that “buyer beware” when it comes to researching and choosing a