i haven't tried self-hosted VPNs, but if you want privacy then routing your traffic through something you are billed for directly seems less than ideal. i use mullvad for VPN, but i'm less interested in privacy and more interested in just having decent speeds and streaming access to BBC radio 1 from north america. for whatever it's worth, they do seem to have decent privacy measures in place and as far as i know they don't block torrents either. their account system works on randomly generated numbers only, and they claim to keep no DNS logs whatsoever, but you kind of have to take them at their word as there's no real way to verify it.

ooh i've not heard of mullvad before, why did you choose them vs other servicers?

they were recommended by a friend who works in computer security, they had a free trial so i could make sure it worked on my phone and all my OSes, and they had servers everywhere i wanted. there may be better options out there but i've never had any problems with mullvad.

ooh checking them out, they do seem very good :0 thank you for this