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Done a lot of reading on this subject recently, and I want to make sure I'm doing this correctly.

I activate my VPN, then activate Orbot, and run OrFox (tor browser) through the orbot browser tab.

This should, essentially, protect me from malicious exit nodes on TOR, and keep my ISP or other prying eyes from seeing my activity.

What throws me is that Orbot and ExpressVPN both show me using different IPs. Not sure if this means that my IP from device to TOR is one thing, then from TOR to internet is another, or if one is cancelling out the other.

I haven't done much config with either app, as I don't want to end up doing something I can't easily undo. But I have worked out the DNS of my home router to the ExpressVPN provided one, and made my IP static and did the same on the device end. Hopefully that's not redundant.

Should also be noted that I have the ExpressVPN app running OpenVPN UDP.

I'm relatively new to the networking side of things, especially with trying to protect my identity/logs. So if someone could just let me know that I'm on the right track with this and what my next steps are, that would be extremely appreciated.

Havvokk
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  • I was under the impression that Orbot IS a VPN so I've done nothing different on my Android. I'm too new also. So I do very little for fear of wrecking what seems like a good thing. – Jay_Man Apr 01 '16 at 01:45
  • Using VPN with Tor just adds a little more protection (at the cost of a little more latency). Essentially, you're just adding another hop to the 3 hops inside Tor. – SuperSluether Apr 01 '16 at 20:10

1 Answers1

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Looks good to me. If you connect to the VPN first, all of your internet traffic goes to the VPN. When you connect to the Tor network (after connecting to the VPN), your traffic does something like this:

Device ==> VPN ==> Tor Network

Your VPN service will show you the IP address they are giving you, and the Tor network will show you the IP address you have from the Tor network.

Your IP ==> VPN Service IP ==> Random Tor Exit

SuperSluether
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