A fish rots from it's head. They'll go after them; if anybody.

Your level of privacy is the same as everything else you do on the internet without a VPN. Also, just because you use a VPN that doesn't mean that everything you do is private. Not all VPN services take privacy seriously. If they are located in a 5 or 14 eyes country or keep logs at all, your privacy is already compromised.

How legal are such services? Not at all. You will hear tall tales of "grey areas", but don't let that fool you. I'm sure some countries don't care what you do on the internet, but most countries where the streams originate certainly do.

You are taking the same legal chances with these services that you do if you have ever torrented anything other than open source software. There are steps you can take to protect yourself, but you know what you're doing isn't legal or you wouldn't take steps to protect yourself while doing it. Do/would you use a VPN to watch Netflix and worry about your protection with them? Some will split hairs and say, "yes", those people are arguing for the sake of arguing.

There have been provider take downs, but I have never heard of an end user being hassled. That doesn't mean that there hasn't been, i've just never heard of it. And that doesn't mean that they won't start. It's clear that some ISP's are taking it seriously enough to traffic shape certain protocols or block it entirely. It's only a matter of time before they start looking at end users.

Yep, be very careful, I'm writing this from a buttphone whilst awaiting my execution. Unfortunately the nice people at Hallmark aren't as nice as they appear, they didn't quite appreciate me watching it on IPTV.

.... Nah, you'll be fine as long as you're not reselling or shouting about it. Also providers can't really prevent you from connecting to a VPN, there's loads of VPNs with countless servers - where did you read this? It sounds like you may have been influenced from a few too many tin-foil hat lovers :)

Enjoy the IPTV service, Governments have bigger problems than what you watch and from where.

VPN hasn't saved anyone form jail, its anonymity marketing bullshit is equal to 0. Nothing is anonymous on internet.