How dangerous is it to be a communist in the US? Should I be very hush hush about it? I won’t ever be open about it but I’m just wondering how secretive I should be. Most of my close friends and certain family members know that I am a “Socialist”. I am pretty young and still need to start my life and I don’t want to ruin my chances of anything.
Some precautions I’ve taken are installing a vpn and only going doing commie stuff with vpn on. I’ve separated personal and political social media accounts and never post political stuff on my personal ones. Should I be doing any other things?
Thank you in advance
I think I was just unclear. To my understanding, this is the process:
Pis encrypted for Tor and incorporated in a packetT, which also contains the address for the first Tor node (unencrypted).Tis encrypted for the VPN and incorporated in a packetV, which also contains the address for the relevant VPN server.Vis sent to the VPN server.Vand can readT, which contains the unencrypted destination (the first Tor node) and the encryptedP(which the VPN server cannot decrypt).Tto the first Tor node.Is this still incorrect?
No, thats not how it works. To do that you would need to create a custom VPN server to create a united PC-VPN-TOR encrypted network, which no commercial VPN service offers. Ill try to explain it more simply. Regular commercial VPNs are designed to be used for normal direct connections, not for Tor. The VPN acts as a 1 intermediate, “impersonating” your PC in order to provide you anonimity. Imagine that you want to buy “Maos Little Red Book” in a library or something, but you are afraid that will get you flagged for some CIA watchlist, so you ask me to buy it for you. Im the VPN and you are the PC in this case. The library doesnt know you bought the book, but i do.
Now lets imagine you instead ask a random guy on the street to do it for you, who then asks another random guy who then asks a third one. That would be Tor, much more anonymous. However, if you do VPN + TOR, meaning I ask the random people instead of you, it defeats the purpose, cuz i still know you bought the book. Thats the problem. Its the VPN that requests Tor encryption, not your PC, because the VPN thinks you are just accessing a website, its not designed to be used with another proxy on top. The VPN is designed to be the only proxy, its not safe combined with other proxies. Do you understand know?
Edit: Tor is not designed to be configured through an additional proxy. Thus, Tor understands the VPN to be your computer, and sets up the end to end encryption from the VPN. Equally, VPN isnt designed to be used with Tor, the Tor data travels unencrypted (for the TOR protocol, it is encrypted with the VPN protocol) from PC to VPN, and only becomes encrypted from VPN to TOR.
Are you sure about that? I don’t see how the VPN could possibly have more information than the first Tor node would have if no VPN was used (based on this). Do you know of any source (ideally from the Tor/TBB developers) that explains this in detail?
Also your link literally states what im saying, just without getting into technical details.
“Once the VPN client has connected, the VPN tunnel will be the machine’s default Internet connection, and TBB (Tor Browser Bundle) (or Tor client) will route through it. This can be a fine idea, assuming your VPN/SSH provider’s network is in fact sufficiently safer than your own network.”
I don’t see how you can interpret it as such. That quote only says that the packets will be routed through the VPN (which is not running a Tor daemon). The VPN should not have the key to decrypt the encrypted payload.
To make sure we’re talking about the same thing, I mean the first option here.
Ok, ill explain again, please read carefully. Tor is NOT designed to be used with a VPN, its designed to be used with a normal internet connection. Thus, the encrypted end to end connection is established between the PC and the TOR exit node. Thus, only your PC and the TOR exit node can read what you do. However, when you use a VPN, since the VPN is what is connecting to the TOR entry node, instead of your PC, TOR believes the VPN is your PC (which is the point of a VPN, to hide your real IP), and thus the encrypted end to end connection is established between VPN and TOR exit node. Thus, VPN and TOR exit node can read what you do. While TOR exit node is decentralized and you pretty much use a different one for every connection so its not a real problem, VPN is centralized, meaning it is a problem.
Not incorrect, but the VPN still has access to the Tor packet, so the security is compromised. The goal of TOR is to provide an anonymous network; running the TOR packet in a VPN just gives away your data, therefore reducing your anonymity.
I’d read over the Tor site for clarification.
VPNs aren’t about encryption; VPNs form fake IP addresses that have fake geolocations.
Yeah, but it’s not any more compromised than if the packet was sent straight to the ISP (unless the VPN is actually less trustworthy)
It is though. Adding more adversaries that can snoop on the packets leads to a higher chance of your data being leaked.
TOR was never designed to run on VPNs; and they don’t recommend using a VPN on TOR.
If you don’t use a VPN, your ISP has access to
T. If you do use a VPN, your VPN provider has access toT, but your ISP only has access toV. Whether you’re adding another adversary depends on if you distrust your VPN provider less than your ISPIf TOR is already encrypted on it’s own, then why use a VPN?
Not revealing to your ISP that you’re using Tor, for example (although apparently that’s far from guaranteed)