[tor-talk] 2 hop mode for people that only want to use Tor for censorship circumvention to conserve bandwidth and decrease latency?

[Nathan Freitas]

On Mon, Jun 13, 2016, at 08:55 AM, Greg Norcie wrote:
> If your main concern is merely circumvention (and you're not worried
> about
> retaliation for circumventing), you might be better off using a VPN.
> 
> Unlike Tor, there is no globally published list of all VPN services, so
> you
> could probably find one that isn't blocked by your country. Most services
> take Bitcoin if payment is an issue... I'd look askance at any "free"
> VPN.

I know you weren't saying this, Greg, but I do often feel that we are
too quick to push people who only want circumvention, and not anonymity,
away from using Tor. Also, increasingly with DPI / traffic
fingerprinting, we are seeing VPN protocols being blocked in places like
China, and thus the VPNs are adopting traffic obfuscation methods like
Meek and ObfsProxy as part of their software.

>From Ars, a great thorough assessment of all the downsides to a VPN:

"The impossible task of creating a “Best VPNs” list today: Our writer
set out to make a list of reliable VPNs; turns out the task is
complicated."

http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/06/aiming-for-anonymity-ars-assesses-the-state-of-vpns-in-2016/

Best,
  Nathan