Okay. They do have port forwarding though

ProtonVPN

On the tracking and phoning home: gross, I wish they didn’t do that. I’ll stick with FreeCAD.

It makes sense though, that they don’t care about pirated software unless you’re making money off it. It’s probably in their interest of hobbyists can learn how to use the software from pirated copies - that’s just a potential future paid user, if they develop the skills to eventually want to use it professionally.

How would Autodesk or Dassault discover that you are using a pirated copy of their software in the first place?

Yes, that is what I do with the same setup

SimpleLogin. It’s owned by Proton, and I use their VPN and mail quite a bit. And it can be integrated with BitWarden to generate random usernames that forward to your mail account