Let's say I run a node at home.  Let's say I have a laptop from which I run a wallet only.  I can access my node from within or from outside my home LAN, whether my node is public or not.  I suppose the primary way to access my node from outside my home LAN - assuming it's not a public node - would be for me to poke a hole in my LAN's firewall via VPN tunnel. In that case, I figure my privacy level is no different than if I accessed the node from within my home LAN.  

But what if I have a public node?  What if I access my own public node from a remote location and sync my wallet and make transfers?  Does my privacy level change?