Either/or, and when necessary both. Is your ISP becoming a nosey nellie (monitoring what you do online), and a chatty cathy (gossiping to TLAs or NGOs about your activities? A VPN will bitchslap both away. All the ISP will know is that you are connecting to a VPN, and not where you go after that. Paranoid that your VPN is another nosey nellie and chatty cathy? Connect to TOR through the VPN; all your VPN will know is that you are connecting to TOR, and not where you go after that. Connecting to TOR from your ISP is probably risky business. I have seen claims that Big Bro is quite interested in TOR users, has many ISPs monitoring for its use, and snitching on its users....and this is in addition to the surveillance program called X-Keyscore.
Tor is certainly an option, however users need to be aware of the several pitfalls
for a VPN, i would personally recommend - i'm currently using Nord, but will switch some time in the future - Nord is simply too big and my trust of a company decreases as its popularity increases
as for the gubmunt and ISPs interest in Tor, i don't know enough about it, but apparently all they are seeing is an encrypted connection so i'm not sure their interest would be less for VPN users since that's also encrypted ... feedback welcome
NordVPN is based in Panama, which has no mandatory data retention laws and does not participate in the Five Eyes or Fourteen Eyes alliances. It's TOS is not too bad either:
https://my.nordaccount.com/legal/terms-of-service/
I did not consider it because it does not offer GUI client for Linux. Due to dyslexia and ADD, the CLI crap is a no-go for me. After much research, I will be picking between AirVPN, Mullvad, and VPNArea. Still deciding. Only VPNArea is based in a 'safe' area (Bulgaria). The other two are in Sweden and italy.
https://www.privacypolicies.com/blog/isp-tracking-you/
https://www.cnet.com/news/nsa-likely-targets-anybody-whos-tor-curious/
https://www.vpnmentor.com/blog/tor-browser-work-relate-using-vpn/
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/nsa-targeting-tor-users
https://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/aktuell/NSA-targets-the-privacy-conscious,nsa230.html
https://privacy.net/what-is-tor/
I was unable to find the previous site that claimed ISPs were reporting TOR use to TLAs, but I'll keep looking.
i'd go with Mulvad - i've read a lot of reviews and they seem to be the most privacy conscious
depending on your setup, running a VPN on your router may be the better idea - this way all clients use it and you need not worry so much about a CLI, though just doing <program> --help will give you the info you need to know
as for the 5/14 eyes countries, i'm not entirely sure it makes a damned difference, but i suppose it doesn't hurt to avoid them
(post is archived)