Quote from: jampants on July 31, 2013, 03:38 pmQuote from: tbart on July 31, 2013, 03:24 pmsomething hit me that i missed - curious why the perceived need for VPNs & bridges to conceal the use of TOR?I'm not sure what purpose it serves, as there are a multitude of users using it for legitimate activity, just for the sake of privacy. Is it just part of that "not standing out" in general internet traffic? - ie, being part of the larger population of internet users, that do not use the TOR network?Because extra layer's like VPN's and padding make it harder for deep packet analysis, bad exit nodes and correlation attacks. Trust me ALL ISP's log TOR traffic in western countries and dictatorships, they won't acknowledge it but they do log it that's for sure.You don't have to worry about disconnecting or anything of the sort. VPNs, to my knowledge, do not offer any protection from deep packet analysis or bad exit nodes. None. Zero. Correlation attacks, yes, probably... but I don't see how they could possibly offer protection from the other two.A VPN is an encrypted link between your computer and someone else. The "someone else" then allows you to essentially behave as though you were part of their internal network, e.g. access your work computer as though you were down the hall or something. But your link to your entry guard in the Tor network is already encrypted, so deep packet analysis isn't going to do much good either way.If the exit node you go through on the way to a clearnet site is "bad' and monitoring or injecting things into the content, a VPN won't offer any protection there either (that I can see, anyway).