On a slightly off-topic note, a VPN can help to circumvent censorship of Tor, either by your ISP or the server operator’s ISP, and may look less suspicious than Tor. (Going through Tor, then a VPN, is also difficult to configure, because it is non-standard and Tor can only carry TCP traffic.) The wiki entry also carries this warning:Įven if you pay for them anonymously, you're making a bottleneck where all your traffic goes - the VPN/SSH can build a profile of everything you do, and over time that will probably be really dangerous. The wiki entry says that going through Tor, then a VPN, is “generally a really poor plan” because it results in a permanent exit node, whereas Tor itself switches circuits frequently.But this would give you two permanent nodes in a row, which is probably not good for anonymity. Having a VPN as a permanent entry node sounds good, as Tor itself tries to use a (semi-)permanent entry node.It is difficult to predict what effect this will have, but basically:
Without special precautions, a VPN failure could lead to you silently making connections without the VPN.Ī VPN always acts as a permanent entry node or exit node. A VPN may offer a false sense of security.On the other hand, a trusted VPN can help protect you from flaws in Tor itself, including colluding Tor nodes.A VPN adds an extra hop, making passive attacks (slightly) harder, but increases the attack surface, making you more vulnerable to a global adversary.
The discussion below is a summary of the wiki entry, together with some thoughts of mine: They recommend VPNs (with Tor) only for advanced users and refer to a wiki entry for details. This is one of the top questions on the Tor Project site. It depends on your threat model and how well you configure everything.
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