Hey, folks! Please, tell me what you think about Tornet + VPN combination. To be exact in-browser VPN extention. If you connect to TOR proxy first and then connect to VPN you don’t expose your real IP to a VPN-provider and conceal the fact you’re using TOR (to prevent captchas on sites etc ). This way you could use any VPN (even free tear propriety) Am i right?

  • spinning_disk_engineer@lemmy.ca
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    3 days ago

    First off, I would be careful around browser-based VPNs, especially free ones. If it’s in the browser it’s often just a proxy (as opposed to wireguard or openvpn), which is potentially bad for normal functionality or privacy. Also, if it’s a free service then it almost certainly collects your data itself, and won’t necessarily be allowed by sites either.

    That being said, there are two ways to layer the two type of tunnels:

    Connecting to the VPN first is relatively common. This means that your ISP can’t see you connecting to Tor. Furthermore, VPNs are designed to tunnel your entire system, while Tor generally is not. Thus, you can have some traffic that is merely VPN protected and some that runs through the Tor network as well. In this situation my ISP knows which VPN provider I use, my VPN provider knows (1) my identity and (2) my network activity outside of Tor, and sites that I visit can only see that I use Tor.

    The other direction is to connect first to Tor, and tunnel the VPN connection through there. This is very much not intended: Tor only tunnels TCP, while most VPN protocols use UDP (only, or more efficiently). The reason is that it’s actually quite difficult to hide your identity from your VPN provider. If the VPN is the innermost tunnel, then that means that it has access to all your network traffic. I’ll assume that all of it is encrypted with TLS (but be careful because a single error is bad). Then, the VPN only knows which domains you visit, how long, how much data, and at what times. This is still quite significant. Then there’s the issue of payment. If you choose a free service, it almost certainly means it’s selling your data. I will say that this is better than most other uses for free VPNs, but it’s still pretty sketchy. If you’re paying, then you need one which accepts payments in monero (or zcash or another private cryptocurrency) or cash by mail.

    Overall, Tor over VPN is relatively normal. I use this configuration regularly. VPN over Tor is highly unusual, and you should consider if you need it. If you need a recommendation for a VPN though, Mullvad supports both monero and cash by mail (sweden), and is generally a good all around VPN (as long as you don’t need port forwarding). One final thing to note: If for some reason you want to use a VPN on both sides, do not use the same VPN, even with separate accounts. Probably, they won’t check, but at that point you might as well just use straight Mullvad VPN.

    • PiraHxCx@lemmy.ml
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      3 days ago

      I’ve read somewhere that adding too much complexity just lights a beacon your way, like “look at this guy with shitty latency using all these weird ports, he must be up to something”.

      However, OP just seems to want to use Tor without falling into Captcha Hell.

      • pogonyalo@lemmy.mlOP
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        19 hours ago

        Appreciate your comment!

        Yeah, it makes sense. I’m probably yet not educated enough to understand what happens under the hood when i use this and that. But i’m glad that there are people that can advise me :)