2026-09-16 · IPV4 Scanner
All three change the IP address a website sees. That is where the similarity ends, and treating them as interchangeable is how people end up with the wrong tool for the problem they actually have.
The useful question is never "which is most private". It is "who am I hiding what from".
A proxy sits between you and a destination and forwards requests on your behalf. The site sees the proxy's address instead of yours.
The limitation is scope. A proxy is normally configured per application, usually just the browser, so everything else on your machine carries on connecting directly. People routinely believe they are fully proxied when only one browser tab is.
Many proxies also do nothing about encryption. An HTTP proxy can see and modify anything not already protected by HTTPS, and free public proxies are frequently run precisely to do that. If you do not know who operates a proxy, assume they are reading what passes through it.
Proxies earn their keep for narrow jobs: reaching a region-locked resource, testing how a site behaves from elsewhere, or routing one specific application. Not for privacy.
A VPN builds an encrypted tunnel from your device to the provider's server. Everything leaves through that tunnel, not just the browser, and the outside world sees the provider's address.
This does two genuinely useful things. On a network you do not trust — café Wi-Fi, a hotel, an airport — everything is encrypted to the VPN, so the local network learns nothing beyond the fact that you are using a VPN. And your internet provider loses visibility of which sites you visit, seeing only a tunnel.
Now the part the advertising skips. You have not removed the observer, you have changed who it is. Everything your provider could previously see, the VPN company can now see. That is a straight transfer of trust, and it is only an improvement if the VPN is more trustworthy than the alternative — which depends entirely on the company, its jurisdiction and whether its no-logging claim has ever been tested.
A VPN also does nothing about identification that isn't based on your address. Log into an account and you are identified. Your browser fingerprint follows you. Cookies follow you. Changing your IP address does not interrupt any of that.
Tor routes traffic through three volunteer-run relays, each peeling one layer of encryption. The first knows who you are but not where you're going. The last knows the destination but not who you are. No single relay sees both ends, which is the entire design.
That is a fundamentally stronger property than a VPN, where one company always sees both. Tor removes the need to trust any individual operator.
The costs are real. It is slow, because your traffic crosses three relays chosen without regard to geography. Many sites block or endlessly challenge traffic from known exit nodes. And its protection is easy to destroy from your side: log into an account, and the anonymity the network spent three hops building is gone. The Tor Browser exists because ordinary browser behaviour undermines it in a dozen quiet ways.
| Problem | Reach for |
|---|---|
| Untrusted Wi-Fi | VPN |
| Your ISP logging your browsing | VPN |
| Region-locked content | VPN, or a proxy for one app |
| Testing a site from another country | Proxy |
| Journalism, whistleblowing, evading state surveillance | Tor |
| Advertisers tracking you | None of them — use browser controls |
That last row matters. If your concern is being followed around the web by advertising, none of these three solves it, because none of them touches cookies or fingerprinting. Browser privacy settings, content blockers and separate profiles do more than any amount of address changing.
After connecting, check the address a site actually sees — if it still shows your provider, the tunnel is not carrying your traffic. Two failures are worth testing for specifically.
The first is a DNS leak: your traffic goes through the tunnel but your name lookups still go to your provider's resolver, which leaves them a full list of the sites you visited. The second is a WebRTC leak: your browser can reveal your real address through a feature designed for video calls, entirely independently of the VPN.
Both are silent. Nothing appears broken. The WebRTC leak test checks the second directly, and it is worth running once with your VPN connected.
Does a VPN make me anonymous?
No. It moves who can see your traffic from your internet provider to your VPN provider. That is often a worthwhile trade, but it is a trade, not an erasure.
Are free VPNs safe?
Treat them with real suspicion. Running VPN infrastructure costs money, and if you are not paying, the revenue comes from somewhere — historically from logging, injecting advertising, or selling bandwidth. A free VPN asks for more trust than a paid one while offering less accountability.
Can I use Tor and a VPN together?
You can, and it is usually unnecessary. It adds latency and complexity, and configured carelessly can make you easier to identify rather than harder. Use the Tor Browser as designed unless you have a specific threat model that demands otherwise.
Will a VPN stop websites tracking me?
Barely. Cookies, logins and browser fingerprints identify you regardless of your address. A VPN changes one weak signal among many stronger ones.
Why do sites block me when I use a VPN?
Because VPN and data-centre address ranges are published and widely used for fraud and scraping, so many services treat them with suspicion by default. It is not personal.