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Bremen, KS | I know this is a bit late.
When interacting with your bank, Amazon, eBay, AgTalk, or any site that enables HTTPS by default and when your browser gives an indication such as a lock symbol to the left of the URL in the address bar, the data you pass to and from that site is already encrypted and a VPN really adds nothing. The only thing I could think of, as I understand it, is that your ISP would see the connection to the VPN server and not the outbound from the VPN server to the other site (unless the other site happens to be served by the same ISP). This can be important if you can demonstrate that the ISP is tampering with traffic to certain sites, though in that respect why wouldn't they add the VPN server to the list of sites to tamper with.
Another thing, going to a site that uses HTTPS through a VPN will be a bit slower as the data will need to be encrypted and decrypted at least twice, once for the base HTTPS traffic and then again when it goes through the VPN. VPN's aren't a panacea but they do have their place as Cain Farmer notes they can be use to view content that is restricted from being viewed in a region home to the originating IP address. Their true usefulness is in tying two disparate networks together as a single "virtual" network over the Internet, hence the name.
Let's say you have a bin site some miles away that can only access the Internet via cellular. Using a VPN between the routers (likely using OpenWRT on each router), the remote site and the home place can be joined through the VPN and all remote devices are accessible at either location (here I am describing a VPN that does not use a central server and the VPN exists solely between the two routers over the Internet). Businesses have used VPN technology to join various offices into the main company network and so on for some time.
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can your ISP read data if you have a VPN?
