There seems to be some conflation of security issues and protection software in this thread.
VPNs will do nothing to protect you from phishing or any other malware attack on your computer or your phone/tablet. That is not their purpose. You need to use good sense with what you click on in emails, etc., and use a good virus/malware protection application on your device for that. BTW, the built-in Windows Defender is quite good, so Windows users generally have no need for anything else.
VPNs will also will not protect you from tracking for advertising purposes by the sites you are accessing. These sites install cookies on your computer whether you are using a VPN or not. They don't care, generally, what your IP address is or appears to be.
For online shopping at local stores (e.g. Target or Home Depot), a VPN can be a nuisance since it will cause those sites to assume you are in the city where you VPN service shows you to be (for me, in MN, that is typically Chicago).
What a VPN does do is prevent any third party (including your ISP) from snooping on your unencrypted internet traffic. It also disguises your IP address and physical location. It does this by encrypting all traffic to and from your device. Your device is actually communicating with the VPNs server rather than directly with the web site you are connected to. The VPN will act as a middle man ensuring that all of the traffic in and out of your computer is encrypted and that your actual IP address is not visible to anyone.
Of course, the VPN server itself needs to also be secure for any of a variety of attacks or mandated disclosures.
The legitimate use of a VPN for most people is to protect from "man-in-the-middle" type attacks, whether that is the seemingly innocent-looking dude on a laptop sitting in the McDonalds while you are using their hot spot or whether it is your ISP snooping for traffic-control or other purposes. Successfully doing a "man-in-the-middle" attack is highly technical and difficult, except for the fact that ready-made gadgets to do just that are available on the market if you know where to look for them.
BTW, when camping, do you REALLY know what kind of electronic snooping may be going on inside other RVs???
Illegitimate use of a VPN does allow you to pretend to be from somewhere else to bypass certain locality restrictions on web sites or services. It also allows you to hide your internet traffic from such disclosures as would come from a law enforcement search warrant, but if that is your intent, you need to use a VPN service outside of your home jurisdiction and/or one that keeps no logs of your activity.
I use Nord VPN, and have done for years. It is a German company, and Germany has some of the strictest personal privacy laws in the world. I wouldn't trust any of the USA big tech companies' VPN services any farther than I can spit into a hurricane.
