Due to my paranoia about privacy, I am planning to use one. Any recommendations? Nord perhaps?
. Only if you like the nasty parts of the Internet having access to everything. Nord is one to avoid at all costs, as they have proved to be inept technically, and liars.
TBH, depends what you are doing, but now Google pretty much insist every website is HTTPS, device to site is encrypted. Which means the VPN offers nothing, unless you want to appear to superficiously coming from another place.
A VPN is simply a way to provide a supposed private link to another network, using a public network (such as Internet) as the transport. That other network in the case of those pointless VPNs offered to the naïve is simply a datacentre(s) where they put the endpoint - so offers nothing from that endpoint to the final destination.
Was there other type of traffic you wanted to encrypt? We can let you know if a VPN can help