>>965628I stand by Proton for privacy. They are in the email encyption game and a data breach on even their free VPN service would destroy their reputation (which in terms of online privacy is all you could really go by)
small VPN-only companies can get skrewy because they can "close shop" and reopen under a new name with the same infrastructure
torrenting is a difficult thing to answer because most of the even halfway trust worthy brands have that locked to only paid users
if you are willing to limit yourself to 2GB of data each month,
Hide.Me is not a bad option
you alternatively could try finding a free trial from a big brand and just keep renewing under a new email and dead credit card (though thats hard to do)