So I’m just being introduced to the concept of using a VPN or something like Tailscale to access one’s services, instead of opening the services directly to the web, but I’m thinking for streaming purposes or just accessing your services on the run, isn’t it an annoyance having to connect to your home network all the time? Or do you keep the VPN running on your phone for example? What if you use a VPN provider for privacy purposes, wouldn’t one need to then switch VPN connection?
Depends on how secure the application and the security you use in front of the application such as reverse proxies, load balancers, etc. If you are exposing a web application with no SSL, no two factor with, or something in a beta state or if you can’t trust your ISP not to create man-in-the-middle attacks for advertising and collecting information to sell which also likely introduces security vulnerabilities, then that could be a problem and a VPN or similar might be a big help.