I’ve been reading about how to access it and stuff, and I’ve heard mixed answers and it til me to ask reddit
You most likely don’t need the VPN. Just using Tor Browser is perfectly fine in most cases.
You can use Tor and VPN together in whatever combination you want, but generally using Tor only will do the job and it is considered more secure than other options.
Why wouldn’t you just use Tor without a VPN? There are extremely few usecases where a VPN helps you.
All the information you could ever want on this topic: https://gitlab.torproject.org/legacy/trac/-/wikis/doc/TorPlusVPN
whonix or tails is the only way to be anonymous dont listen to other comments
You use tor so the websites you visit can’t track, and others can’t track.
You use a VPN so your internet provider can’t track, and it’s harder for websites and others to track.
Personally I use a mix.
If I’m downloading games I normally don’t use anything as it’s faster for me, and I don’t care if my provider knows I play games.
If I’m watching YouTube or Netflix I use a VPN so my provider dose not see and I can bypass geolocked content. Disney plus works on protonVPN without issues…
If I’m browsing the internet or searching things I use tor as I don’t want to be tracked on everything I search… but I don’t always use a VPN so my provider knows I’m on tor.
If I’m looking at questionable stuff through tor I might also slap on my VPN so my provider just sees a VPN and I can’t be tracked by websites… mostly this is me on hacker related dark web stuff being overly paranoid.
You can, but you really shouldn’t:
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Free VPNs usually store logs and sell your data. If you’re not paying with real money, your usually the product.
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A VPN won’t really help anonymize you. All it will do is not allow your ISP to see that your using Tor. If you don’t want your ISP seeing that you use Tor, use a bridge instead.
Yesterday I went to the deepest corner of the internet’s underbelly and found myself on sale for $50, I bought myself from there.
You should never use Tor with a VPN. Tor already anonymizes you and using a VPN will likely compromise that. It’s hard to trust VPN companies. They will collect your data.
I wouldn’t. You get what you pay for.
I have been using Nordvpn for 4 years, for gaming, for my business, no problems with speed, many countries, convenient connection, they also have a promotion 3 months free and 68% discount. https://go.nordvpn.net/SH5d9"
He’s exactly right. It might be “free”, but trust and believe you’re paying for it one way or another…
everyone that has replied had been way more helpful than the websites I was reading
this is FUD. Riseup VPN is free and riseup is so trusted that they run one of the 10 core tor index servers (or whatever they are called)
(edited to add)
riseup runs one of the 10 trusted “dirauth” tor nodes. they also run a free VPN. Its slow but works for most things. Riseup collective is deeply embeded in many FOSS projects including tails and tor. You can be fairly confident that their VPN is trustworthy.
https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/74A910646BCEEFBCD2E874FC1DC997430F968145
I am sure there are other free VPN providers that you can trust with your privacy, its just hard to verify that trust without a visible income stream.
Nah, the last one one is the viable use for VPN+TOR and definitely not paranoid. Don’t want anything to backfire.
Thanks for this reply. I’m still learning all this, so this is very useful. I don’t doubt how secure Tor is, but I don’t want my ISP to know I’m using it.
How do I use a bridge
This is incorrect. It really boils down to configuration.
This is rubbish advice. A vast number of people who would use Tor, i imagine also use a paid VPN that they have done their due dilligence on. These are also the people who might keep a VPN on 24x7, so inevitably if they want to browse using Tor, its going to run on top of the VPN. Nobody should be exiting out of the VPN just to use the Tor browser, thats ridiculous.
ProtonVPN has a FREE VPN tier option, you can easily run Tor browser on that if you’re so inclined. Personally, just a hardened Firefox with multiple profiles for my google and social media is good enough for me. I can easily do without the Tor browser, but not without a VPN.