this post was submitted on 29 Feb 2024
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Privacy

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submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 
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[–] [email protected] 34 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Same meme was posted here some time ago, so I'll reiterate what i commented before.

The Tor project themselves reccomend against using a VPN with Tor (unless you know what you are doing). A VPN in this context doesn't really do much, except preventing your ISP from knowing you're using Tor. If anything that just makes you more suspicious.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

If anything that just makes you more suspicious.

Nah. I work from home, I need to use my work's VPN to access resources that are only available to those on the network. VPN use is now generalized.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago

Not just your ISP, also particular surveillance and tampering methods of nation-states. It is good to have your egress point to be in a noncooperative jurisdiction.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I'm a bit of a noob about privacy, but wouldn't preventing people from knowing you're using Tor be pretty important? I know that, among people who know of Tor, but don't know much about it, the use of Tor alone is generally associated with criminal activity, and often conjures up imagery of worse things than just piracy.

If I were to tell my friends I was thinking of using Tor, and I didn't immediately have a good explanation of what I'd use it for beyond "privacy," then they'd think I was into some nasty shit. I'd imagine the ISPs, and anyone else they might give/sell their info to, would be suspicious of anyone logged to be using Tor.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

Here's a video explaining why you should use Tor with a VPN.

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It's pretty much an open secret at this point that most tor exit nodes are controlled by the FBI.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 8 months ago

Oy vey shut it down

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

Basically the only way to be 100% secure would be to create your own "private tor" by building a botnet, then making sure to burn/recycle the nodes, and only access it via a proxy gateway consisting of a raspberry pi that you purchased with cash, and paid a homeless dude to plug into the router at a public library in a city where you don't live.

But realistically most peoples use cases fall somewhere on the spectrum between normal browsing and this extreme scenario. If you are doing something that illegal you probably need better opsec across the board. Most of the arrested darknet dudes got caught because of sloppy opsec in other areas, not because the Tor network failed.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

To use a vpn with tor, All you have to believe is that when the feds turn up at the vpn boss’s house in the middle of the night, he’s going say “yes I would rather do 20 years in jail than reveal information about my client who pays me £4 a month”