2) protecting your browsing traffic from being observed by your ISP (where you may not have much choice), at the risk of it being observed by the VPN company (which you trust).
3) Torrenting without having to worry about fines, nastygrams and other annoyances
4) Bypassing geoblocking
1 + 2 is what the VPNs advertise, but I think 3 + 4 are what people actually use them for.
As someone else pointed out, URLs are not trackable, host names are, but the advice often comes in the form of "don't do sensitive stuff like online banking from untrusted networks". Since especially this has had HTTPS for 10+ years now, this advice is far outdated.
> 1 + 2 is what the VPNs advertise, but I think 3 + 4 are what people actually use them for.
I don't know, I've seen two different "household" gaming Youtube channels advertise VPNs with a focus on geoblocking. I was kind of shocked at how brazen it was.
Open wifi networks still exist. When last I was at my public library (a year ago... covid) they still had an open wifi network for public use. I think for them it's a matter of principle, since it means nobody has to ask permission to use it.
Long-outdated? It's more important today than it was 10 years ago. That public wifi you're on is tracking your every move and correlating your devices back to you if you happened to purchase anything in the store with a credit card.