Vac-Private match/Dedicated server

you go out of your way to be a pain don't you

not really.. I mean it wouldn't make much sense to get vac banned while playing offline.

You gave him the answer, just the ''stupid question'' was not needed tbh.

There's a plugin I believe for dedicated servers where you can disable vac and play whilst hacking with friends. And for private match you can be alone and not worry about a vac but if you have something open that's detected and a friend joins your private match then that will cause a vac. That's from my personal experience at least. Hope this helps.

From my experience, VAC is disabled in private match.
Dedicated server owners can disable VAC on their servers.

Doubt it.
I use CE since more than one year in private match without ban.