I’ve been using PIA for years for my downloading purposes, as well as having a VPN when I travel. No issues at all and completely reliable. Don’t know if I’d trust them to leak state secrets, but not an issue because I don’t have any.
VPNs are one tool to help. They’re not the end-all-be-all. If the VPN provider is reliable, they can protect your IP address and keep your internet link more secure if using public network facilities (wifi or cellular) as the VPN tunnel is (should be) encrypted.
That said, if you are using software that fails to protect your user information by defect or by design, it can still leak data at the endpoint you are using, even though your connection is (hopefully) more secure.
Pretty tired of catering to other people’s allergies. Unless you need an epipen to survive it I really don’t care about their sniffles or scratchy eyes.