Is Tor Safer Than a VPN?

Tor and VPNs – they’re both popular when it comes to securing your privacy.

But which one is the safer option?

I’m going to cover all you need to know about that in this article.

What Is a VPN?

VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. It’s an online service that encrypts your Internet traffic, and masks your IP address.

Basically, when you connect to a VPN server, it replaces your real IP address with its own address.

As for the encryption, here’s how it works:

• The client negotiates a connection to the server.
• Then, the client encrypts your traffic, and sends it to the server.
• When the server receives it, it decrypts your requests, and forwards them to the web.
• Next, the server receives the content you wanted, encrypts it, and sends it to the client.
• The client decrypts the content so that you can view it.

What Is Tor?

Tor stands for The Onion Router, and it’s a free online anonymity network that hides your IP address, and encrypts your web traffic.

In that regard, it’s similar to a VPN. But it works differently:

• Instead of one server, your traffic gets routed through at least three servers. On the Tor network, the servers are called “nodes.”
• Tor encrypts your traffic multiple times. Every time it hits a server, it loses a layer of encryption.
• Once your traffic reaches the exit node (the last server), it’s decrypted and forwarded to the web.
• The network replaces your IP address with the addresses of the servers. Only the entry node will know your real IP address, while the website you access will only see the address of the exit node.

If you want to learn more about the service, check out this Tor review for more info. I will be discussing a lot of important things about Tor, but that guide has a ton of other useful and in-depth info.

So Which One Is Better for Privacy?

Well, there are a lot of things to consider. To make things as simple as possible, I’ll discuss the drawbacks of both VPNs and the Tor network regarding privacy separately:

VPN Drawbacks

Depending on the country that the VPN provider is based in, or where they store their servers, they might be required by law to keep records of user data, and hand it over to the authorities if they request it.

In more severe cases, the police can just seize the server if they want to – like they did in Turkey with one of ExpressVPN’s servers.

Also, VPN servers are not immune to data breaches. Though, it’s worth mentioning that this tends to occur due to errors on the data center’s side.

I should mention that you don’t really need to worry about any of that if you use a VPN that has a no-log policy. That way, even if hackers compromise the server or police seize it, they can’t get any sensitive user data since there is none.

The Turkish police-ExpressVPN scandal is a good example. Even though they seized the server, there was no useful info since there were no logs.

VPNs can also compromise your privacy by stealing your bandwidth and adding it to a botnet, exposing you to adware, or selling your data to advertisers. But only free VPNs do that.

Tor Drawbacks

The main issue with using Tor for privacy is that it can leak your IP address. It already had an issue with that once, and it can also do it if you try to open Windows DRM files.

What’s more, the exit node doesn’t encrypt your traffic. That’s already bad, but it gets worse when you consider that there are malicious Tor nodes too.

And oddly enough, Tor gets funding from the US government. Also, one of the co-founders made it clear that when you use Tor, you’re helping CIA agents conceal themselves.

Besides that, there are other issues that make Tor less suitable:

• Governments can block it – Turkey, Venezuela, and China already did it.
• ISPs can block Tor too. It’ll just take them some time since they’ll need to block all the IP addresses of Tor servers – which are accessible right here, by the way.
• Websites that run Cloudflare security software can use a built-in firewall to block Tor traffic, meaning you won’t be able to access websites like 9gag, Medium, Fiverr, or Discord.
• You can’t torrent over Tor – even the devs say it’s not safe to do that.
• Services like CapLoader and Plixer can actually single out Tor traffic.

The Bottom Line

All in all, I’d personally say you’re safer with a VPN than Tor – but that’s only if you use a legit and reliable service.

That means absolutely no free VPNs, and making sure the premium provider doesn’t keep any logs, makes it clear in the Privacy Policy they don’t share your data, and uses strong protocols.

There’s less risk of government interference that way, you don’t have to rely on “volunteers,” and the VPN encrypts your traffic end-to-end.

Also, use antivirus/antimalware protection on all your devices. Neither a VPN nor Tor can protect you from malicious files.

Can’t You Just Use VPNs and Tor Together?

Yes, you can, actually – you just need to use a VPN service that supports Tor traffic. Luckily, providers like NordVPN, AirVPN, and ProtonVPN do that already.

If you run Tor over a VPN, the first Tor server won’t know your real IP address – only the VPN server’s address.

Also you the exit node won’t see your traffic since the VPN encrypts it.

And best of all – a VPN can help you unblock Tor.

The only drawback of running Tor over a VPN would be the speed.

Tor is already slow enough since there are only around 6,000 servers serving nearly two million Tor users. And a VPN can also slow down your speed a bit.

So, you should expect pretty big slowdowns if you do this. Though, if you only need to boost your privacy for a short period, it’s going to be tolerable.