USER > VPN > TOR or USER > TOR > VPN ?

VirtualBox
1

I have just installed Whonix Gateway and Whonix Workstation in an Oracle VM Virtual Box inside my Fedora 23 OS and everything is working perfectly, I am actually very impressed with Whonix thus far. However, I have also VPN installed and, with just a very basic internet knowledge, I am still confused with what exactly I am getting in terms of anonymity.

When I boot Fedora my laptop enters directly on my account on the ISP and just after that I manually start my VPN; after that I open the VM and start both Whonix Gateway and Workstation, on this order, and starts to browse with the Tor Browser. The VPN is not set inside Whonix. So, What exactly am I getting, user>VPN>TOR or user>TOR>VPN?

When I go to whatsmyipaddress from my firefox browser, outside Whonix, I can see the ip of the VPN server, but when I do the same from Tor Browser inside Whonix I see a different ip, which I suppose is a TOR server. But since my host OS Fedora is accessing the internet solely through the VPN, I understand (I may be wrong…) that, whenever browsing inside Whonix with Tor brownser, I must be having either user>VPN>TOR or user>TOR>VPN since I cant see how Whonix would connect through the internet ignoring my VPN, which is set in the host OS. But which one of them I am actually having?

Thank you for your attention.

2

Good day,

Well, the main gain you have by using this set-up is that your ISP cannot observe whether you use Tor or not. That’s it. Unless you have configured your VPN wrongly, Virtualbox will use your VPN to connect to the internet, thus the same goes for the Whonix gateway.

Have a nice day,

Ego

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3

Thank you Ego. So, what you are saying is that when tor-browsing inside whonix I am actually using USER > VPN > TOR ?

4

Good day,

Yes, that would indeed be the case.

Have a nice day,

Ego

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5

I also recommend to read our documentation on the topic.

1 Like
6

Thank you Patrick, I was not aware of it and gonna read it carefully now.

1 Like