[Poll] VPN or Tor?

Privacy and Security Discussions
1

Which of the following options has been the most true for you in the last year?

  • Only VPN
  • Only Tor
  • Mostly VPN
  • Mostly Tor
  • Both VPN and Tor equally
  • Neither VPN or Tor equally

0 voters

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2

Very curious to see the results for this. Should hopefully outline the (what I assume to be) huge variety in how people think about their privacy

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3

I think it’s going the other way. I think VPNs will be the most popular by a good mile. They get talked about more and I think the average privacy-conscious person understands how to configure that better that Tor.

To show my hand, I don’t even know if you can use Tor outside of the Tor Browser, lol. I think you can…

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4

Nowadays mainly use Multi-Party Relays(MPRs) like iCloud Private Relay which uses similar architecture to TOR. Based on my personal experience, the browsing speed while using MPRs is almost identical to or just as fast as browsing without them.
However, the main drawback is that you require a browser that supports MPRs, much like TOR.

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5

You technically can through things like Brave, but it’s generally recommended to use Tor Browser itself since that’ll make you blend in easier with other Tor users :slightly_smiling_face:

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6

I find Tor a bit too slow for daily browsing, one thing I like is doing using encrypted DNS when not using VPN. I don’t have a very high threat model, just want companies seeing as little about me as possible.

7

Nowadays mainly use Multi-Party Relays(MPRs) like iCloud Private Relay

Are there any examples of MPRs apart from iCloud Private Relay?

8

I feel it is really about threat modelling. Different threat models call for different uses (or lack of) of both.

9

There is invisv relay for android. However never heard about them before or used their service. I do hope to see more options in the future as MPRs are relatively new technology first introduced by Apple at WWDC 2021.

At WWDC 2023 also introduced Oblivious HTTP (OHTTP) and MASQUE Relays to third party developers. Maybe we will also see privacy focused browsers (or any app that need to connect to internet) adopt this API to enhance privacy.

10

I watched through this and was disappointed to see that it doesn’t seem developers can leverage Apple’s own Private Relay. Seems like a missed opportunity.

11

The results are in, and they line up with what I thought. Most of us use a VPN more often than Tor by a good margin. Thanks for participating!

1 Like
12

I think it’s important to point out that the constant DDOS attacks on the Tor network make using Tor nearly unusable many times. I’d love to use Tor more often for day to day tasks like browsing the web and doing research but it’s just so painfully slow at times.

And god help you if you have to pass a captcha verification. Recently I have been waiting for a several minutes for hcaptcha to load on many websites.

1 Like