Even in that article it says the only info they can provide (due to the no-logging) is payment info and email address.
If you're doing something illegal and use a credit card attached to your name to do it, Nord is going to hand over your credit card info and they'll know you did it through their VPN.
Likewise, if you do something illegal with their VPN and use your personal email, same thing.
That being said, I don't personally use the VPN for anything illegal. If you do, I suppose you should probably either self-host or just Mull, but in my case I like Nord's Killswitch and Mull's is notorious for dropping off.
I'm also a big fan of Mint for this, but also Fedora Kinoite. I can't say I used Kinoite extensively, but I can say the bit I used it was far more stable than any other distro I used (and the backups-for-free approach really helped my anxiety lol)