Wtf. Was this just an IP takeover?

In that case yes ofcourse. Why even ask. Pirating is illegal. Vpns are cheap. I can recommend Proton or mullvad

I do not understand your question. If you surf the web you should use a vpn. No matter your location. Some locations ask for vpn usage more than others.

I’d advise to use headscale on a vps somewhere. Its tailscale but selfhosted.

Jeaaaah I made the mistake of building everything myself. 1.5 years and counting and I have no working environment due to free time constraints.

Buy a nas. You’ll be up and running much quicker. Build a separate server instead. Look for low powered intel NUCs and run portainer or proxmox. Or both. Use rsync or nfs to backup relevant data to the bought nas and use Infrastructure as code/gitops to configure the NUC.