A facebook employee explained me how tracking works. Its not the email address Meta is concerned about. Its the IP, device identifiers and location. Meta doesnt care about the email at all apart from sending you emails for notification. Even with a fake email they exactly know who you are. Let’s say you visit CNN.com which has facebook tracker. Facebook has the IP and the device identifiers. Now you login with fake email account on Instagram, facebook knows that’s the IP ans the same device hence it “must” be the same person That’s how facebook creates shadow profiles.
But the VPN company still has your data
firstly, you can choose a good VPN provider like Mullvad or iVPN. Secondly, even if the VPN company had all your data, it is not much worse if worse at all than your ISP having your data, and at least you have an IP address that is not actually yours.
People who argue VPNs are useless are just plain naive. Yes VPNs are over hyped by youtube sponsorships its not gonna keep you protected from a hacker that gets access to your bank accounts password, but it will improve privacy by a bit.
There is no such thing as a “good VPN provider”. VPNs were not created for privacy. They exist to allow individual users and groups to network together in enterprise environments
If you want more security use i2p or tor