>you can do everything a VPN can do just by renting a server and installing some software No, you can't. You lose so many things, including geo flexibility and the most impotant reason to use a VPN - security through obscurity, having all of your traffic aggregated with others in a natural de facto poison the well. Hosting your own server doesn't hide your searches and browsing, it just masks the origin IP. Pure script kiddie nonsense. You aren't qualified to be giving advice, you don't even understand and comprehend the purpose of a VPN saying stupid shit like this.