I don’t trust either my ISP or my VPN. But the ISP knows far too much about me: real name, home address, phone number, sees my phone traffic, sees my TV traffic. I want to hide anything I can from my ISP. So I use a VPN to hide my internet traffic from my ISP (and hide my home IP address from web sites).
There are many cases of ISPs abusing people’s data, or breaking their service promises, too.
Tor is secure without using a VPN. You want a VPN to protect the non-Tor traffic coming out of your system (other apps, updaters, cron jobs, etc).
I suppose it’s a tiny bit more secure (more layers of encryption in a couple of places, ISP would find it harder to tell that you’re using Tor). But you’re adding one more company that knows some metadata (time and quantity) about your traffic.
The VPN really is not needed for that purpose; Tor is secure.
You do realize that I did address to all of your facts and those I didn’t agree with addressed them with proof yes? Even why a VPN is a downgrade to your privacy. And please stop enforcing your opinion.
Idk I used two or years ago. I liked their servers and I think the provider could somewhat be trusted. They have a pretty good culture and history and BTS.
It’s more that I’m recommending going with a VPN whose encryption keys aren’t identical for everyone and publicly known, or who is known to be spying on users. While it’s best not to trust them, you can still make intelligent decisions about which one to use.
How do you protect non-Tor traffic ? Hide it from the ISP, keep destination web site from getting your home IP address ?
You mean Tor Browser, or route all the traffic of my system through onion network ?
Tor Browser won’t handle my traffic from other apps, services, cron jobs, updaters, etc.
Routing all traffic through onion means performance penalty for everything, many sites blocking onion traffic (more than block VPN traffic), no way to control my apparent physical location, I think no way to do UDP traffic through it.
Can’t answer what I said, can you ?
you think a VPN can’t leak ?
VPNs are not perfect, and I don’t trust them. Test for leaks. Assume they will log and sell your data. Compartmentalize.
Now, what data can they sell ? If you signed up anonymously, not much. “IP address N sent HTTPS traffic to web site at IP address M.” That’s about it.
the site you visit using only the Tor browser doesn’t see your real IP address, only the first node sees your real IP.
Yes, the VPN has nothing do with protecting Tor traffic; it doesn’t help or hurt Tor traffic.
The VPN protects non-Tor traffic coming out of your OS. From updaters, services, cron jobs, other apps such as email client. None of that traffic is from Tor Browser, so none of it goes through onion network. It reveals your non-Tor traffic details to your ISP, and reveals your home IP address to destination sites. So use a VPN to protect that non-Tor traffic.
This dude sounds like a fed trying to make us vulnerable lol he just hit you with literal facts and you still try to make an argument the nerve of some people is out of this world
Routing your entire system traffic through Tor would mean to use Tor as a transparent proxy. Which was and still is discouraged. Check this TransparentProxyLeaks · Wiki · Legacy / Trac · GitLab. Some of those might be outdated but some still apply.
So, back to my question: How do you protect non-Tor traffic ? And your answer “Use Tor” doesn’t work. For example, my OS and apps have updaters that run at unpredictable times. How do I protect the traffic from them ? A VPN.
Yes, there are many things in your system that do traffic. Do you want your ISP to be able to see what sites they’re accessing ? (From that, your ISP will learn what bank you use, what credit card, what email, school, work, what social media, porn, etc. And remember, your ISP knows your real name, home address, probably phone number.) Do you want those sites to know your home IP address, and thus track you across sessions and sites ?
If you don’t care about any of that, don’t use a VPN.
The vast majority of my activities are not in Tor Browser or a torrent client. So I use a VPN 24/365. When I want to do some Tor, I leave the VPN running, to keep protecting the background non-Tor traffic.
You’re right, you don’t need the VPN to protect Tor traffic.
No. You can torify those apps. For example let’s use apt. You can use an onion mirror and apt-transport-tot. Or not use an onion mirror and just torify it. You probably won’t get the same security and anonymity but still. There are a lot of things to think about.
Yes, there are more-complicated things you can do. They might work, unless a site blocks Tor traffic. There will be a performance penalty, more than with a VPN.
A VPN is simpler, good enough, and has some advantages over onion.
I don’t understand phones too much, but even there I use a VPN 24/365. I have an email client on the phone, for example; why should the ISP see what services I have email accounts on ?
Sure it does. If you trust the provider. A VPN can be hacked easier than Tor. I posted its weaknesses. If you respect your privacy do not use a VPN unless you are a hardcore torrenter. Also take a look at Whonix.
I don’t trust my ISP, any VPN, or Tor/onion. But my ISP is the company I fear the most; so I use either a VPN or Tor. VPN is simpler, and all I expose is that I’m doing HTTPS traffic to certain sites. Works well for me.
Yes, and sometimes I notice my VPN doesn’t automatically re-establish if the Wif-Fi goes down for a while and then comes back. So it’s not perfect.
Everyone has to find a level appropriate for them.
Tor and a VPN, any VPN, are two very different things.
Tor is much easier to trust than a VPN. A VPN provider might see what you are doing.