should i be using a vpn with the tor browser or is tor enough?
A VPN is unnecessary and instead could just open up security issues downstream. It used to be a problem in the past.
Depends if Tor is illegal in your country or not, and if your ISP is required to give customer information to your government or not, or if your ISP sells it off. If those conditions are true, then you do want to use a VPN. However using a VPN is always a huge trust factor, there’s a lot to keep in mind, a big one is the company behind your VPN of choice based in 14 eyes territory? If so, they may be compelled by law to hand over customer data. (This varies depending on country, so even if it is in one of these territories, look up the countries specific laws)
Another one is, what is the companies history? Does the company have a history of shady dealings? Is there a parent company behind that company? Etc. And of course, never use a free VPN for that purpose, as they are more than likely selling your data off, or in the case of something like Opera’s VPN, simply aren’t a VPN. However, even in this use case, you could avoid the hassle by using a Tor bridge, or pluggable transport.
Now, if you are in a country where Tor isn’t illegal, then no, you shouldn’t be using a VPN with Tor as at that point at best it’s pointless redundancy, at worst, the VPN company is shady. The setup I’d recommend for using Tor is a VM setup running Whonix if you want to ensure your activities stay on Tor and are very hard to identify as you. (So long as you don’t do anything that would give away who you are.)
It’s kinda counter productive at that point, I assume you are just using tor on windows with no vm? If so I would recommend getting a vm and installing tails on it. Accessing anything on the dark web through windows isn’t safe and you pretty much are just letting Microsoft watch everything your doing. If you want to be even safer grab a flash drive and create a bootable live disk of tails. I’ve also heard that it’s unsafe using a vpn while using tor for illegal or other forms of browsing since when your ip gets hidden through many nodes it can get pinged through your vpns server with the likelihood of it being able to be traced back to you. Personally I would ditch the browsing on windows and create the bootable flash drive. If not create the vm. The only real difference you will have using a vpn is your isp won’t be able to see you launched tor.
It’s pretty much like using 2 condoms, it’s not necessary.
Depends how dark you going but normaly just tor vpn is good enough for just looking at stuff
^it’s all about the money honey
I also believe this but there is some information and even people who will back the fact it’s safer to use a VPN with Tor I personally recommend no VPN but I don’t know enough to argue about it hahaha
Tails is NOT designed to run in a VM. It’s a pure non-sense, regarding its design and goal.
Use r/whonix instead, designed for this use.
“how dark you going” and “looking at stuff”… not sure what’s the difference… I thought it was the same in .onion domains… But my wild guess would be to consume or just looking, right?
The issue is, would you rather have the onion data exit at your home, or exit at a third party’s office then relayed to your home?
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It is bud this guy is new to using tor, so I would already imagine he’s new to vms or creating live disks. So it was easier to recommend it in a vm.
If you buy shit its darker than ehen you just look at it. Thats how i understood it
I remember reading a story of a kid who went on tor at his university to issue a bomb threat or something to the school. They checked logs, found which PC had connected to TOR and questioned the kid. Had he gone vpn → tor he would likely have not been caught. So it probably depends on your use case.
No it’s not. It was absolutely not designed for that. See this page if you doubt.
Any random distro with tor on a VM would be as efficient.
And using whoix is not difficult. It just imply to run 2 VM instead of one.
I’m gonna make a guess and assume that his school couldn’t see his Tor traffic, only that he used Tor, and questioned him about it.
And he ended up cracking. He probably would’ve cracked regardless. The majority of people do when questioned by anyone with authority.
Yes that is exactly what happened. But a vpn would have likely made it so no one would have questioned him. Also, he could have gone to anywhere other than the school and connected straight to tor, but opsec was clearly not his forte. Basically vpn + tor may be best if you dont want a network admin knowing you are connecting to tor.
Yes you want either a VPN and/or bridges when you don’t want your current network to know were you’re going for that exact reason. That’s tor over the vpn, not the other way around.