Are there some monthly threads somewhere? Where?
That’s all I needed thankyou
I’m a total rookie I’ve just been trying to follow YouTube vids to no avail. I appreciate the advice but sadly it just goes over my head lol.
Mullvad offers two hops, plus it’s the least expensive at about $5 per month.
I also believe in using VPNs with Tor. Some discuss mention using chained VPNs, for example, one on a VPN travel router (like those that GL-iNet make) one on the host operating system, and one on the virtual machine - without using Tor at all. I fear that Tor will be cracked soon, and may already have been cracked. So VPNs are definitely important
Good points, I stand corrected. Just avoid the 14 Eyes countries
Netherlands is also 14 Eyes btw
Exactly what I wrote.
Potentially packet loss, certainly very high latency from going through four proxy hops and using TCP to tunnel UDP. Extreme latency may be acceptable for web browsing, emails, and file transfers, but it’s a showstopper for video and audio calls and real-time games.
Edit: Let me re-try that explanation. For most applications, like web-browsing and file downloads, delays are acceptable, but data loss is not: we want the entire file to download intact, in-order. That’s what TCP guarantees. For real-time applications like video calls we want the opposite: losing a frame of video is okay, but falling a second behind is not. UDP allows packet loss in order to improve latency. By tunneling UDP over TCP you lose that ability to easily drop packets that arrive out-of-order or too-late, and by tunneling over four hops of proxies you make latency much worse. Most applications that use UDP are relying on that low-latency packet-loss-is-okay behavior, so while UDP software will technically run under the setup you’ve described, it’s likely to be unusable.
Yes some services are able to detect VPNs, since VPNs IPs are public, so all a service has to do is block all the IPs. However it works differently with your ISP. Since in this case you’re connecting TO the VPN rather than connecting to Netflix for example THROUGH the VPN, an ISP will immediately be able to detect if you are using a VPN.
But typically, using a VPN will look much less suspicious to an ISP than using Tor (this is for many reasons), so for most people it doesn’t really matter if their ISP sees them using a VPN
Yes, well said, use a VPN only if you trust it more than your ISP.
Thanks, would appreciate. Not sure we should trigger automatically on any mention of “vpn”, but might find something to lessen our own workload.
“Here” as in a comment on this post.
They had a situation a while back in 2019, and didn’t really handle it in a way that inspired confidence. A VPN is essentially a trust-based relationship between the consumer and the company. If the consumer can’t trust the VPN provider, then there’s no value in the VPN company’s offering. They also have some pretty awkward marketing practices. There really isn’t many good reasons to pick them to be honest. Trust is hard to earn, extremely easy to lose.
im new too. use kleopatra for encryption. it comes with tails. luks or veracrypt for pc encryption.
Two hops going through the same company seems like it defeats the purpose.
Agree.
As seen lately, the government has US based tech companies by the balls. They fold and bend with little to no pressure quite to often.
This is why in the case of using TOR, connecting to a preferably non US based tech company VPN service first is probably the way to go.
It boils down to:
- Trust AT&T to protect your identity
or
- Give Billy’s VPN service in some basement in the middle of of Rwanda who hates the fucking law more than you do a shot
My main thing in all of this is that too many people on here jump down your throat if you suggest VPN paired with TOR yet nobody comes out and says there are circumstances where you might want to do that in your best interest.
As far as TOR being compromised, youre right, probably is and has been for a long time.
There is no need to use this attack against a Tor only agent since usage of Tor is obvious.
You can have two different VPNs, one on the host machine, and a second one on the guest machine (using Virtualbox or other hyperviser).
You make excellent points, very well stated.
You probably have seen “Mental Outlaw” on Youtube, He recently did a video that argued against using a VPN with Tor. . But then another tech savvy fellow Jonah Aragon did a 25 minute video where he rebuts Mental Outlaw. I think the key concept is “distributing trust”, so you don’t put all your trust in one system. Maybe have two different VPNs chained, then Tor?