If you’re going to sail the high seas, you are going to need a vpn from a reliable provider that you pay for in order to protect yourself. There are two you can trust: Mullvad and Proton. They are the only two I would trust.
It sounds like Mullvad had too many people using their services for CSAM. When people start using your stuff to abuse kids, law enforcement comes down hard. They had a choice, make it bad for everyone or make it bad for child sexual abuse users and the rest of the port forwarding crowd. Suck but I don’t blame them. They have always been honest in their dealings so I understand their viewpoint.
If you‘re willing to go the extra mile, you could also use a server (or rent a cheap VPS) somewhere and install a VPN server on it (where I‘d recommend wireguard over anything else due to its simplicity, security and performance).
Just like with a VPN service, you‘d have to understand that while your traffic is encrypted towards your ISP, it would still „get out of“ the VPN somewhere. I.e. the IP of your server would still be known by the websites you visit and stuff.
And while I‘m no lawyer, afaik, you‘re bound to the laws of the country which your server is in (which may be an advantage or disadvantage to you).
All in all you get get the advantages of a VPN service, without having to trust a for-profit company.
If you want to browse the internet privately/anonymously, then use Tor (but please do not download big files using Tor! It has limited bandwidth and people in countries where thye have heavy censorship rely on Tor to communicate). If you want to hide your activity from your ISP and torrent stuff, then VPNs are absolutely still the way to go. Just make sure you use a reputable one like Mullvad or ProtonVPN
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