I’ve been using one but I’m not sure what benefits I’m getting from it. I feel like the only thing happening is I’m adding a little bit of latency to all my requests for no reason.

  • mmattq@lemmy.dbzer0.comB
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    1 day ago

    Why is it not recommended to use a VPN over Tor? Doesn’t that mean the ISP can’t see you are connected to Tor?

    • Anna@lemmy.ml
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      1 day ago

      No VPN over Tor means you first connect to Tor and then to VPN. This is highly discouraged because if someone can tie the VPN to you then they can bypass Tor entirely and get what websites you were visiting.

      What you are suggesting is Tor over VPN, here you’ll first connect to VPN and then to Tor, this is less risky but still not recommended as using Tor is not illegal in most countries (remember US Navy built it initially and they and many other spy agencies still use it) also there are other better ways to achieve hiding from ISP. bridges were designed specifically for that.

      • mmattq@lemmy.dbzer0.comB
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        1 day ago

        Ok, so the ISP can see that I’m connected to the Tor network? Using Tor over VPN just adds one more layer of privacy, right? Tor isn’t illegal here; what I’m trying to achieve is anonymity on the internet.

        • naeap@sopuli.xyz
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          1 day ago

          You’re losing anonymity, when you log into your VPN through TOR

          TOR gives you anonymity, but if you connect through TOR to your VPN, which you probably registered with some of your data (or maybe your real IP), all the hops through TOR are useless, because your VPN connection is associated with you.

          It really depends on who you want to hide from.
          If it’s your ISP, then connecting over VPN to TOR could make sense, when your ISP is restrictive regarding TOR. But that’s pretty much the only usecase I can come up with at the moment