How to setup VPN over Tor

[Guffy]

Hello Cryptostorm,

I'm an activist, who really need to stay anonymous. I am trying to setup a VPN over Tor setup, but I really don't know how to do that. Can anyone please help me?

THANKS!

[parityboy]

@OP

First and foremost which operating system are you running? Also, is there a specific reason you want VPN-over-Tor as opposed to Tor-over-VPN?

[Anon21311]

Tor is TCP only, no UDP.
So to get a VPN setup to work, you want to go into the config file and change 'udp' to 'tcp' (it is next to the domain name of the server you connect to, and right next to the port number 443 which you leave intact as-is).

Once that is done, you comment of the lines in config which refer to explicit-notify exit and reply-window since these are UDP-specific settings which are not applicable to TCP.

After that, you can leave the rest intact. It should work. It does for me.

I sometimes use VPN over Tor, but like parityboy asked, the big question here is "why"... Basically, it boils down to two possible answers:

a) you don't trust your VPN or you are paranoid about someone monitoring connections to the VPN and tracing those back to your home/workplace. In that case, with VPN over Tor, the VPN (and anyone watching) will only see that the connections to the VPN come from a Tor exit node.

b) you connect to sites where you need them to see a single consistent exit IP and one which is not a Tor-identified exit node. A VPN (and that includes a VPN over Tor, of course) provides that. Tor, which changes exit nodes every session and every ten minutes, does not.

[parityboy]

@Anon21311

You forgot the part about telling OpenVPN to use a local SOCKS proxy on port 9050 - this is the local Tor relay running in client mode; Vidalia uses a different port for its SOCKS interface, but I can't remember which one it is.

[Kolf]

Do you think My PC -> VPN -> VPN -> Tor -> Internet are more anonymous than My PC -> Tor -> VPN ?

[parityboy]

Do you think My PC -> VPN -> VPN -> Tor -> Internet are more anonymous than My PC -> Tor -> VPN ?

More anonymous is debatable. However, layering two VPN connections before connecting to the Tor network will give you more consistent performance than connecting to a VPN node over the Tor network.

[Guest]

One thing to keep in mind though is if you cant move the location on the VPN location before connecting to Tor(with cryptostorm, you can change location), you are more likely to get the same Tor guard node, in which can actually harm your anonymity on the Tor network, and has been stated by the Tor devs.