VPN Problems

You are responding to some EXTREMELY Bad Advice.

By far the easiest way to cause poor performance, instability, overheating and crashing is to install ANY third-party speeder-uppers, Cleaners, Optimizers, or Virus scanners. or a VPN that you installed yourself.

The idea that a third party, with no special knowledge of the inner workings of MacOS, can somehow find a simple way to protect your computer — that is not already being done by MacOS itself — suggests that the MacOS developers are somehow "holding out on you". That is absurd.

You should remove any and all (other than Apple built-in) virus scanners, speeder uppers, optimizers, cleaners, App deleters or VPN packages you installed yourself, or anything of that ilk.

Third-party file Sync-ers such as DropBox, BackBlaze, OneDrive, or GoogleDrive can ruin performance, but are not inherently dangerous.

Effective defenses against malware and ot… - Apple Community

MacOS 11 Big Sur and later uses a separate signed and sealed system volume that is not writable using ordinary methods, and if it ever does get changed, that is detected quickly.

You are not at risk of spontaneous attack.

In addition, the pinch point is that nothing can become executable unless/until you authorize it by providing your admin password. As long as you are not 'asleep at the switch' that means ONLY approved software can run.

This also means that you could freely download dozens of virus programs onto your Mac. NONE would be a risk to your security, because none can become executable. They are just patterns of bits.

That also means that non-stop scanning for those patterns is a phenomenal waste of computer resources.

if you are behind a Router you control, and enable a Wi-Fi password, your over-the-air messages to your Router are encrypted.

Your Router 'acts as your agent' on the Internet at large, and your local IP address is never sent off your own local network. Your Router has a built in state-wise firewall, that discards any unsolicited incoming requests. Only answers to your DIRECT queries are allowed in. Your Mac is Un-reachable for unsolicited communication from the Internet at large. As long as you are using your own Router, there is no need to activate the Mac firewall. On public Wi-Fi, at the Airport or coffee shop, then maybe the Mac firewall would be a good idea.

A VPN you install yourself does NOT add security. Instead, it sends all your network traffic to a third party site for data harvesting. Your encrypted web site connections remain private, but which sites you chose and when do not. [Institutional VPN use is a differ matter, and will be managed and supported by your Institution (without data harvesting) if required.]