Ooops

Then you should probably point out to OP which VPNs are independently audited and not keeping data or not operating in any country requiring access by law enforcement. As everything else would totally defeat your “but government actors”-argument from above.

Yes, given OPs question (triggered by VPN Ads even) and way of asking there is no reason to believe in any scenario where a state-sponsored actor “on the same network” is intercepting data (like “transmitted passwords”) because it’s only secured by https. That’s “can I login safely from a public wifi?”-level.

As you seem to be passionate about these security issues I’m sure that you are familiar with the concept of threat assesment first. Do you believe that a random user asking publically about information seen in advertising is the target of government-level actors wanting to steal his login passwords used on https sites and that breaking the encryption is the easiest measure here?

As I read this question “high-layer sifting by ISPs” (and providers of open wifi) is exactly the threat scenario here.

But encrypting already encrypted HTTPS data is largely irrelevant (for that simplified analogy) unless you don’t trust the encryption in the first place. So the relevant part is hiding the HTTPS headers (your addresses from above) from your the network providing your connection (and the receiving end) by encrypting them.

Unless of course you want to point out that a VPN also encrypts HTTP… which most people have probably not used for years, in fact depending on browser HTTP will get refused by default nowadays.

Non-Internet analogy:

You communicate via snail mail with someone. Both ends know the address of each other. So does the postal service delivering your mail. Everyone opening your letter can read (and with some work even manipulate) the content. That’s HTTP.

Now you do the same, but write in code. Now the addresses are still known to every involved party but the content is secured from being read and thus from being manipulated, too. That’s HTTPS.

And now you pay someone to pick up your mail, send it from their own address and also get the answers there that are then delivered back to you. The content is exactly as secure as before. But now you also hide your address from the postal service (that information has the guy you pay extra now though…) and from the one you are communicating with. That’s a VPN.

So using a VPN doesn’t actually make your communication more secure. It just hides who you are communicating with from your ISP (or the public network you are using). Question here is: do you have reasons to not trust someone with that information and do you trust a VPN provider more for some reason? And it hides your address from the guy you are communicating with (that’s the actual benefit of a VPN for some, as this can circumvent network blocks or geo-blocking).

Long story short: Do you want to hide who you are communicating with from the network you are using to access the internet? Then get a VPN. The actual data you send (and receive) is sufficiently secured by HTTPS already.