i have several things to say about tor.
- it was developed by the United States Naval Research Laboratory for military intelligence. it continues to be be funded by the US govt to this day. link
- usage of tor does does not guarantee any form of privacy (see #1)
- combining tor with vpn’s or even illegal proxies (see below) still does not guarantee privacy.
about #1 , it seems self explanatory but here goes. i know the EFF has endorsed tor, but the fact that the US govt is involved makes me suspicious of it. if the US govt can imitate foreign persons/entities (as far as coding goes) with great effect, then it stands to reason they can hide code in tor to allow them to id a specific person using tor.
it is not in the interests of the US govt to reveal this info, so they will drop cases to avoid revealing this info, potentially allowing real criminals to go free (murderers , rapists , fraudsters, etc).
#3 the vpn provider may be logging your actions (as much as they can), either by default or compelled by a court/police. they can be compelled to do so even if their policy states they do not.
proxies may be monitored (once discovered) by the police as well.
in short there is no anonymity on the internet today (short of just not using the internet, hi sarah)
an illegal proxy is a computer that has been compromised so that an unauthorized person can use it as a means of -insert activity here- without revealing their own ip address; instead the proxies ip is shown (similar to a vpn) .
proxies can be chained together to make it harder to find the unauthorized person(s) .