I'm a NOOB who values privacy. If money was no issue I wanted know to know which is better to maintain anonymity, Onion Pi or Strong VPN Router or BOTH??? (assuming money is no issue)
This question kind of reminds me of this scene in a old movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw3G80bplTg
Onion Pi vs Strong VPN Router???(Which is better)
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Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.
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- adafruit_support_mike
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Re: Onion Pi vs Strong VPN Router???(Which is better)
In security, there are no magic bullets.
IMO, a VPN wireless router is just this side of useless. It encrypts the wireless data so no one can snoop your packets with a wifi receiver in promiscuous mode, but there are a couple of objections to that from a security standpoint. First, any national agency close enough to snoop your wifi has access to tools much more intrusive than a wifi sniffer. Second, and more fundamentally, wifi is equivalent to engaging in conversation by shouting it through a megaphone. If you want privacy, send your signals through a wire or a fiber. Make 'em get a warrant to invade a location where you have a legally enforcable expectation of privacy if they want to install a tap.
For communication outside your home, TOR and VPN solve different problems.
A VPN connection gives you an encrypted channel between two endpoints. If a business has offices in Chicago and LA, it can use VPN to connect those physically remote locations as if they were a single network without having all their trade secrets floating around for anyone in between to see. You need to control the machines at both ends of the connection to get any value from it though.
TOR is a single-ended system that creates encrypted and hard-to-trace connections between a single client and a network of proxy servers. The proxy network then makes unencrypted connections to servers on the internet in general. Snoops can trace a connection from a server back to the proxy network, but it will then be prohibitively difficult to track the connection through the proxy network back to a specific machine.
That assumes you don't do anything to wipe out all the anonymity provided by the connection, like allowing servers to store tracking cookies in your browser. You also have to be careful about the software you use on your own machine.. the feds recently rounded up some ring of criminals using TOR by getting them to download a TOR-capable web browser with a trojan that silently passed tracking information to a law enforcement server.
IMO, a VPN wireless router is just this side of useless. It encrypts the wireless data so no one can snoop your packets with a wifi receiver in promiscuous mode, but there are a couple of objections to that from a security standpoint. First, any national agency close enough to snoop your wifi has access to tools much more intrusive than a wifi sniffer. Second, and more fundamentally, wifi is equivalent to engaging in conversation by shouting it through a megaphone. If you want privacy, send your signals through a wire or a fiber. Make 'em get a warrant to invade a location where you have a legally enforcable expectation of privacy if they want to install a tap.
For communication outside your home, TOR and VPN solve different problems.
A VPN connection gives you an encrypted channel between two endpoints. If a business has offices in Chicago and LA, it can use VPN to connect those physically remote locations as if they were a single network without having all their trade secrets floating around for anyone in between to see. You need to control the machines at both ends of the connection to get any value from it though.
TOR is a single-ended system that creates encrypted and hard-to-trace connections between a single client and a network of proxy servers. The proxy network then makes unencrypted connections to servers on the internet in general. Snoops can trace a connection from a server back to the proxy network, but it will then be prohibitively difficult to track the connection through the proxy network back to a specific machine.
That assumes you don't do anything to wipe out all the anonymity provided by the connection, like allowing servers to store tracking cookies in your browser. You also have to be careful about the software you use on your own machine.. the feds recently rounded up some ring of criminals using TOR by getting them to download a TOR-capable web browser with a trojan that silently passed tracking information to a law enforcement server.
Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.