With the way these companies advertise, they make it seem like a silver bullet for internet anonymity. Almost every YouTube video I've seen recently seems to have one as a sponsor, and I am sure they are picking up many non-technical customers.

I don't think users of NordVPN, ExpressVPN, MullvadVPN et al. are as sophisticated as you think.

The non-technical customers probably aren't running WSL2 either. In fact I think very few of them actually need a VPN. Those who torrent in litigious countries have a benefit from their VPN provider but I doubt most others don't know about the behaviour changes that need to take place to make a VPN effective.

I think VPNs can be a powerful tool for many people who would normally not be able to find out about their existence, but the predatory nature modern VPN ads have taken is quite sad.

This leads to some cases of Youtube fan bases angrily calling out shitty VPN ads while the video creators just want to pay their bills, a situation nobody wants.

The way Express VPN's ad copy reads it seems their own people don't understand the difference between encryption and traffic tunneling (much less encryption in transit versus encryption at rest).

If they're not that sophisticated they probably won't use WSL anyway though, so it's not a huge issue in that sense (unless some malware specifically installs WSL2 to get around it).

The reason why I route all of my traffic through a VPN is simple - in the UK all ISPs have to keep the history of all your browsing for a year. I want to avoid that. That's it. I just don't like this requirement, especially since lots of agencies can access this data without any kind of warrant - so this is like my own little personal protest against this stupid law. Nothing more complex than that.

"UK-based VPN companies may be subject to the same data retention laws as the country's internet service providers. The UK has also made news in the past as some carriers have blocked certain VPNs. However, the use of VPNs remains legal."

Not sure how much of it is true. I cannot imagine what would happen to some people there were it to be illegal. I would move out.

You can use a VPN that isn't based in your home country. It's much harder to switch to a non-local ISP.

I don't think that's true, plenty of security conscious but not particularly tech savvy people use a VPN with Windows.

Using WSL2 though... you kind of have to be tech savvy to do use it, and those people are probably willing to work around the issue.

Are you saying that you don't think there is anyone on Windows who is using a VPN to hide their pirating activities? If so, you can borrow a needle from me and pop that bubble.