Regarding Tor and VPN's

Hello People, couple questions.

First, I have heard on multiple occasions, that it is recommended to use Tor over VPN, however, I have also heard people discouraging usage of Tor over VPN. From my understanding this is mostly due to the fact that doing so will still provide your VPN service provider with information regarding your internet usage, which does seem like a serious trade-off. Thus, I do feel it is necessary to ask if someone could perhaps explain this to me, or provide a link to an article (or article-adjacent) that would do so.

Also perhaps correlated to this first point, clearly the choice of VPN service provider does have a great effect on OpSec. I personally utilize Proton-VPN, free-version (I am poverty personified), is that a bad choice? As far as I am aware, there have been little complaints regarding Proton's security.

Secondly, is there a major difference between the level of security provided by Tor-Browser, and the Tor-Network? Thus far, I have only utilized the Tor-Browser.

Thank you, and good day.

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As mentioned in another comment, unless your threat model requires it, you don't need to use a VPN to connect to Tor, but using a VPN is considered an additional layer of security that will prevent feds from obtaining your real IP address, for example, if they carry out a correlation attack in the Tor network (as happened in the Boystown case). Using a VPN would prevent them from knowing your real IP address, but this is typically intended for high-risk profiles. Also, consider switching to Mullvad, it is typically a better option if you usually do sensitive stuff.

Although you could use Tor browser without a VPN, connecting to a vpn like mullvad or Proton, or even a wireguard instance means no logs and gives you anonymity from exit nodes that could see your actual IP or even lead to IP leaks.If you don't wanna use Proton VPN, there's a bunch of options like AirVPN, Mullvad, but Proton has great security and offers decent speeds for free-tier users, and is free with some features paywalled

The benefit of using Tor over VPN is that your ISP and router (e.g. if you're using public wifi) don't immediately know you're using Tor (possibly). If the cops are looking for someone logging into an account at 3:00pm over Tor, suspect you, then look to see if you were connected to Tor at 3:00pm, they wouldn't get what they're looking for and might give up. On the other hand, there is packet analysis that could cause them to believe you are in fact using Tor even though the IP address you connect to is not a known Tor node, so the benefit could be minimal.

There is no substantial difference between Tor Browser and Tor via other means. The Tor Browser has some good default settings and configuration ability that makes it better than using another browser over Tor, but there is more than just browsing. You should have your crypto wallets local and route their connections over Tor. The best way is Whonix or Tails.

Depending on your country and how much surveillance they like to do, I would recommend using Tor over VPN (or at least bridges) if you are using Tor from your home and have never used Tor not over VPN so far. It could keep you from being profiled as a potential DNM user and receiving extra surveillance. In the some countries even knowing about Linux puts you on a watchlist. ;) But for just buying, the authorities don't care enough for any of this to matter.

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The post itself is 9806 all characters | 8246 without spaces but I still got the above message :(

Please check out my post below you may find it useful [currently Pending]:

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