You have just looked up that transaction on two block explorers, which could both link your IP to it. Further, your VPN provider could potentially see you broadcast the transaction, and could see you look up the transaction just now. If you aren't currently connecting via VPN, then your ISP could see you look up those transactions.
VPNs do not provide anonymity. You need to use Tor for that.
Tor is really good if you use it wisely. In my routine (especially when dealing with cryptos) I use parallel VPN consisting of two channels and one of them starts at dedicated server run by me. And then, what you said has nothing to do with those "privacy meters". My point was they are mostly useless.