You can trust VPNs like Mullvad, Proton, and Windscribe as they have been audited. Mullvad and Proton are very trusted. Of course, you still need to trust them, but the reason these guys are surviving and running their business is because of the trust they've built over time. Mullvad was even raided by officials, and nothing was found on their servers.

But still, trust is a big thing here. I can trust these VPN more than my data gobbling ISP, who doesn’t work on any principles and will hand over information to the government like a slave at a single order. If you can self-host your own, do it or just blend into the crowd, and you'll be fine.