Are vpns worth it?

Double hop. Run a vpn on your host and one inside a VM. If one data center is logging you have a fall out plan

VPN:

Good for pirates.
Bad for terrorists.

Cheapest VPN for pirating?

Any do any of them let you use BBC iPlayer?

nope.

SItes like Tinder will still see through them

Certain things get tagged and reported to the ISP. The look for that for print and Mark the seeders. If you connect to one, they flag you.