![onion tor browser + vpn onion tor browser + vpn](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/fxJ7VT5Epcs/maxresdefault.jpg)
The purpose of this is to reach services that are blocking Tor nodes. Here a user will first establish a connection to the Tor network before connecting to the VPN service. It strikes me as very naive to imagine that someone powerful enough to trace you over the Tor network will be stopped by a $5 a month VPN service. The last blog explained that even if you were to end up on a watch list, it would be a uselessly large list as Tor has more then 2 million daily users. A bonus of bridges is that they don’t leave a money trail, which VPNs often do. You can either use the bridges that are included in Tor Browser for this, or request other bridges from in any of the ways described here. This is unnecessary as you can hide Tor usage and circumvent censorship by using bridges. The most common rationale behind this setup is to hide Tor usage from an ISP or circumvent censorship of the Tor network. Here a user will first connect to the VPN server, and then connect to Tor. The two commonly proposed configurations are: You also create more attack surface for near zero theoretical benefit. By doing so you essentially create either a permanent entry or exit node, which often also has a money trail. I absolutely do not recommend you to ever run Tor with a VPN. Tor is not intended to be run with VPN or in combination with other services. The worst piece of advice I commonly see is to use both Tor and a VPN.