You are welcome to scan my public IP. There are bots scanning it every few seconds. If there was a vulnerability it would be exploited in the matter of a few minutes.
Also, you have no way of knowing who is behind a website. That's why web browsers have strong security mechanisms. It is by necessity.
VPNs do very little. However, VPN companies want to keep up the fear mongering to make money.
Like I said, people doing self hosting, they often open up ports for those services and management ports.
Some routers have backdoors built in, such as the Fortinet NGFW backdoor, that can also be exploited.
I work in this industry and believe me the risk is real, no vpns aren’t a silver bullet, but there are a few good providers out there that can help mitigate some risks of using P2P for more than piracy.
That would be illegal in Australia and I have to imagine most functional democracies since it has the potential to link voters to votes and undermine the electoral process.
Welcome to mass surveillance. It is not illegal if it is in the name of crime stopping. Whats worse is that Australia has laws that require companies to back door everything.
Worth clarifying that it requires individuals to insert backdoors if told to, it's not a blanket backdoor and frankly I'd be shocked if it held up in the high court.
Nothing ever makes it there though, and it's full of baked in secrecy. I don't use local or US services for anything where privacy is important for that reason.
Good thing Australia doesn't have electronic voting, hey?