You should only use a VPN over Tor when you absolutely must

Do not connect through the VPN or administer your account unless you are using the Tor Browser or Tails.ģ.

Use an anonymous payment method (as discussed in the Domain Games resource) if necessary and.

Create your account on that service using the Tor Browser or Tails.

Make sure it supports the OpenVPN protocol.

So if your VPN provider is compromised (or sells you out), then the fact that you used Tor to get there may become irrelevant. But if you add a VPN server to the mix this way, it will be the thing that connects directly to the services you access. One of the reasons people use Tor is because it provides anonymity that does not require trusting the technical competence of a particular service or its commitment to the privacy of its users. The anonymity of a VPN over Tor depends entirely on the anonymity of And this might be easier than it sounds if both sites rely on the same advertising platform or content delivery network (CDN), for example, or if they are subject to ongoing passive surveillance.Ģ. Over time, anyone with the abilitiy to compare traffic records or access logs from both services will have a good chance of figuring out that these two accounts belong to the same person. (See our Domain Games resource for an explanation of pseudonymity and few concrete examples.) In another tab, you sign into a service with a pseudonymous account. An email account, say, or a discussion forum where you need to post with your real identity. You sign into some service with your normal username. But it also allows the websites you visit to correlate your traffic more easily. By contrast, all traffic using a VPN connection over Tor will appear to have come from the same location (your VPN server).

Tor normally allows different network requests to use different paths through the Tor network, which means they often come from different exit relays with different Intenet addresses. A VPN over Tor does not support 'circuit switching': The Tor Project wiki includes an explanation of the risks associated with this configuration, but we will summarise the three main points below.ġ. The only reason you should use a VPN over Tor is to gain access to services that block Tor users. In fact, it reduces your anonymity in significant ways that we will discuss below.

It is important to understand that supplementing Tor with a VPN does not strengthen the security or the anonymity of your online activities. We will not be discussing this technique in detail because Tor bridge relays are generally considered a better way to achieve that goal.) Risks (Routing Tor over a VPN adds a VPN hop before your Tor entry relay and is sometimes used to reach the Tor network from locations where it is blocked. This method is often called 'VPN over Tor' to distinguish it from 'Tor over VPN' configurations, which work in the opposite direction. One way to achieve this, while still enjoying most of the anonymity benefits of Tor, is to add a VPN 'hop' after the exit relay at the end of your Tor circuit.

If you need anonymous access to these sites - or if you need to access them at all while using Tails - your requests will need come from somewhere other than a known Tor exit relay. Using VPN over Tor for a secure anonymous connection to the internetĪs shown in the table of investigative resources in the Leak and Onion Soup guide, there are some useful web services that reject Tor users as a matter of policy.

Tor proxy setting