When somebody pretend to be an official and get to access whatever they're not supposed to, bad things happen. It's an impersonating problem, not a data/tracking thing. Nothing to see here.
The reverse here in Canada is that most universities require some kind of licensing agreement which in many many cases prohibits transfer of tech to commercial world. What ended up happen is once publications are out, other parties figured out the IP and no benefits stays in the university or Canada. There could be a 'happier' medium but a complex issue.
The beauty of it is also because I don't need to know anything about systemd. Based on my limited experience, the day2day use, the installation, hardware compatibility is just unmatched, let alone performance vs Windows on the same machine. I have 2 machines for kids, with one on mint and other macos. I think none of them knows what 'linux' is nor they care which machine to use. Thank you guys. Will donate.
Not only that, traffic on VPN is certainly more 'interesting' to various parties/authorities. Wanna dig dirt? Go for VPN instead of unencrypted traffic.