Found it on my bike ride today, it was a bit away from the main trail and exposed to the environment (and possibly hobo hands) so I left it where it was. Now that I think about it though, I should of grabbed some to use as kindling for a bonfire.
As a FREE* VPN:
Get a good weatherproof enclosure for your PI, a solar panel, and a power bank. Configure it to automatically connect to any open WiFi networks (via bash script and cron) and then use said connection remotely as your own free VPN. Be sure to put the PI in a good remote area where it won't be messed with, I'd suggest somewhere up high if possible, also if you're using it for not so legal purposes I'd suggest doing it somewhere far away from your main base of operations.
* FREE after initial hardware investments.
I would argue it's unethical of them to force their obnoxious ads on people and that they're not losing any revenue because the person that would patch an app to remove said annoyances would also be likely to just uninstall it if they were unable to patch it.