As for VPN… Unless you want to spoof your location, I’d recommend giving Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1/WARP a try. It’s free, dead simple to set up and comes with a gigantic on/off button.
(It says “Zero Trust” in my case because of my rebuttal in a thread on Saul’s board; https://discussion.fool.com/t/zscaler-regarding-cloudflare-at-jan-12-needham-conference/86440/12. Decided to go all-in and set up zero trust to test for myself if it resulted in any performance degradation.)
It’s designed to be “a VPN for people who don’t know what V.P.N. stands for”. Your traffic will automatically go to the closest data center and exit with a Cloudflare IP from there. The geolocation of that IP, however, will map to your approximate location. On mobile there’s also a paid version (WARP+). I haven’t tried it and won’t vouch for it.
By the way, a good ad blocker like uBlock Origin is essential in my opinion. It’s really not just about not seeing ads. It’s about blocking a ton of stuff that track you and bog down performance. It’s also about security. The less that gets loaded and/or executed when you visit a site the better.