Yes the article is FUD and sloppy. This is what Matthew Hodgson (Arathorn) had to say about it:

Talking of sloppiness, that hackea.org article is a huge steaming pile of FUD about Matrix.

For what it’s worth, the team who came up with Matrix was originally based in two separate startups: one in the UK doing VoIP, one in France doing mobile dev. Both got acquired by Amdocs in 2010, but we ended up forming an independent “incubated startup” first to build telco apps, and then we came up with the idea of Matrix in ~2013. We then built out Matrix until 2017 when Amdocs killed our funding, having run out of patience for what amounted to generous FOSS philanthropy.

We then set up New Vector (now Element) as an entirely independent UK/FR startup, and have received zero funding from Amdocs since. To be crystal clear: Amdocs has zero privileged influence or control over Matrix (or Element, for that matter), and has zero access to the Matrix servers we operate as Element. And besides - the whole point of Matrix is that you can and should run your own servers so you can pick who to trust, even if you don’t trust the project itself.

Generally we’d say no, not really, and certainly not with the highest security.

The whole point of a security key is that it is supposed to be impossible to extract the key material, that simply isn’t going to be the case for a DIY solution. They have shields, and light sensors to prevent decapping/forensic inspection.

Recommend taking a look at this: https://duo.com/labs/research/microcontroller-firmware-recovery-using-invasive-analysis

VPNs are still worth it for that purpose, particularly torrenting… Not sure who is saying this but they are wrong.