It is said that VPN is necessary for protection on public WIFI networks and that it encrypts your data. As far I can tell, HTTPS does encrypt the payload in each IP packet, but the source and destinations are in plain text and thus visible to bad actors.
So the conclusion is that the bad actors can see only the IP addresses that appear in the traffic and that the payload is safe. Using the VPN would protect the destination IP address, but not the source address (that is mine).
I would like to know if my understanding is correct. Thank you in advance.