It can really be argued both ways, and smart people take both opinions. There are clear advantages to using a private bridge: It is far less likely to be in a given attackers list of known Tor bridges / nodes It is far less likely to be under active surveillance than a random bridge or node, potentially making you much more secure from active timing attacks there are clear disadvantages: Most people don't use 'strict bridges' or private bridges. After enough time, several less than global passive attackers will probably be able to determine that some entity (you) is strictly using a private bridge. This makes you stick out from the crowd and may be cause for further investigation, possibly. There is *no* crowding at the entry guard of a private bridge. there are even some disadvantages to using bridges in general, for one using a bridge gives your anonymity a hit in order to give your membership concealment a big boost. For two, if the bridge fails at actually providing membership concealment it is worse than not having membership concealment in the first place, because now you stick out as someone who is using Tor who feels some need for membership concealment. In this respect, if using bridges is a very good or very bad idea depends entirely on your attackers ability to defeat the membership concealment properties of bridges. It is actually a quite complex question and without having intelligence on the feds abilities it is not possible to come to a definitive conclusion. Also a source of confusion seems to be the fact that bridges and entry guards serve so many roles. Looking at them from a censorship resistance perspective, Vlad is correct to suggest that you should use as many bridge nodes as possible. This is far more in line with a chinese citizens threat model than with ours though. Looking at them from a membership concealment perspective, you should use as few bridges as possible, however using less than two bridges creates serious security issues and it is probably best to use three. Looking at them as entry guards, it is clearly better to use less. It is probably best to treat them like regular entry guards, selecting no more than three at a time. Bridges used in this way become entry guards and thus you are not losing the protection of entry guards by using them.