The picture is slightly more nuanced. What's your exposure from browsing a web page or your mobile phone? Your IP address alone is enough for companies that use network provided APIs obtain your full billing information, location information, and more:<p><a href="https://medium.com/@philipn/want-to-see-something-crazy-open-this-link-on-your-phone-with-wifi-turned-off-9e0adb00d024" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/@philipn/want-to-see-something-crazy-open...</a>
I'm going to say the quiet part loud: The main use cases for a VPN are BitTorrent and changing regions on streaming sites. For which they provide a necessary and valuable service. But since they can't say "Download any movie only $4/mo" in their ads, we get "military-grade encryption" instead.