in this video we want to understand the differences between the tor proxy and a vpn.
now these are not the same type of tools.
they are used for different reasons.
and you've definitely heard of vpns before.
every podcast and youtube video and whatever has an advertisement for a vpn.
and the tor proxy is not as much talked about.
but it's important to understand how they operate and what they do.
so a tor proxy is really focused on hiding the source and destination and then hiding that source and destination during those hops, right?
that's the whole the whole strength behind tor.
it uses strong encryption.
when you use the tor browser with it, you leave less of a trace.
but the core of what tor does is those hops, that onion layering, onion routing protocol where it layers the encryption and you get that obfuscation from that.
if we look at earlier when we talked about the problem with the isp being able to see things, right?
if you want to get a file sent back to you, you have to make that connection and your isp can see the website you're going to, and they can potentially see the contents of the file if it's not encrypted.
but in a different scenario, if you were going to connect to tor, you'd connect to your isp 1st, the traffic goes to tor, tor then sends back information about the circuit that it can connect to, and then you actually connect through that circuit through tor to request that same file.
in this scenario, we're still looking at a problem of your ispcs.
you're using tor.
so it's not much different.
they can't, they're not going to see the website you're going to, which might be a use case for the tor proxy, but they can still see that you're going to tor.
beyond that, there's still the risk of that file being seen if it's not encrypted properly, meaning that if you're not using https, if you're not using at least tls encryption or some level of encryption on the website, there's still a risk of that file being in plain text.
so let's break down a quick comparison, right?
both of these tools, the isp doesn't see the destination you're going to.
both of these tools, the destination can't see where you're coming from.
they'll only see either the tor node or the vpn node and the traffic is encrypted along the internet.
a vpn is a little bit different than tor because it uses pretty standard encryption, aes usually for transport, although you can select your level of encryption while tor focuses on the onion routed protocol and that onion encryption in there.
vpns are paid for, for any good services.
free vpns i would not trust personally.
so pay for a vpn if you want one.
tor is free though.
a vpn, the browser can still leak information, so that's an important thing to note.
but if you utilize the tor browser and the tor proxy together, you're actually a lot more safer from any potential leaks.
and the tor proxy is open source, while a vpn does rely on your user trust.
you have to trust a vpn that they actually don't keep the logs, that they're actually using the encryption.
now you can check some of these things yourself, but if you don't have the knowledge, you're not going to know for sure.
so those are the main differences.
for the most part, you're going to want to use a vpn for day- to- day stuff.
the tor proxy overall might be a better tool, but you don't always need the best tool.
sometimes you need the tool that will work.
but that's really it for this video.
in the next video we're going to kind of debunk some vpn talking points.
we mentioned a few of them throughout this video.
so you'll probably know what we're going to talk about, but we'll do that.
then we'll dive more into how the tor proxy works and onion routing generally.
so let's continue on and i will see you there.