But those are just words for “a group of a special size”

Some eastern languages have totally different counting words depending on WHAT you’re counting. One set of number-words for flat things, another set for long things, another set for printed/bound things, another set for things with handles…

I’d argue that VPNs remain one of the highest return-on-investment (time and money) steps towards online security, as many gaps as they do have in the big picture.

It’s not going to make you untraceable. But it’ll make you difficult enough to trace that nobody’s gonna put forth the effort to target you specifically unless you’ve attracted like, nation-state attention. (Targeting you as a member of some demographic a la advertisers, yeah not much effect).