TOR vs HTTPS/DoH/VPN: what’s the real use-case for a privacy enthusiast in North America?

Questions
1

Hi everyone,

I’d like to get some perspectives from this community on the real use cases of Tor today, beyond the usual “avoid surveillance” narrative.

I’m based in North America and my threat model is fairly low… I’m not evading censorship or conducting sensitive research. Professionally, I work in cybersecurity and personally I’m a privacy enthusiast who values supporting a free and decentralized internet.

I already use strong privacy hygiene in daily life:

  • All traffic over HTTPS, with DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) to a trusted resolver (nextDNS).

  • Segregated browsers and identities for work, personal use, and admin tasks.

  • Occasional use of a VPN (mainly for network isolation and IP masking).

However, I keep wondering whether using Tor (even for routine browsing) makes sense philosophically or technically, in 2025.
On one hand, I know that using Tor helps keep the network healthy and normalizes its traffic. On the other, I’m aware of real downsides: exit node surveillance, speed tradeoffs and being associated (even algorithmically) with higher-risk traffic.

So I’m asking the community:

  • For someone in my situation (no pressing need for anonymity), but a strong interest in privacy ethics : is it meaningful to include Tor in my regular digital routine?

  • Would a VPN + HTTPS + DoH setup be sufficient, or does Tor still offer unique structural value in supporting internet freedom and resisting centralized control?

  • Are there hybrid or symbolic ways to support the Tor network (running a relay, gateway, or contributing to privacy tools) without routing my daily personal traffic through it?

I’m not looking for generic answers… I’m more interested in a systems-level discussion of Tor’s role and relevance today for users who already practice strong digital hygiene.

Thanks in advance, I appreciate the depth and pragmatism this forum tends to bring to these kinds of discussions.

2

I’m not sure I entirely understand what you’re asking here. Are you asking if Tor is ethically meaningful for you to use in the sense that you’re wondering how much it actually matters for you specifically to use it with regard to keeping the network healthy and normalizing traffic?

If that is the case, I suspect the answer is similar to the answer for any sort of collective effort on that scale: probably “not much”, but if every individual came to that conclusion and stopped doing so, it’d be a huge problem. You can’t control what other people do, so the way I see it, it is important to make sure as many of us as possible do our part for the good of everyone.

“Sufficient” seems like something only you can define with respect to your threat model. I would definitely say that Tor provides unique censorship resistance compared to VPN + HTTPS + DoH via things such as bridges. You might not consider that relevant to your threat model now, which is fair. Personally, I’m of the mindset “by the time I DO need to avoid censorship of that degree, if I don’t already have Tor, it’ll be too late to get it”. That is to say, I’d rather use up a little disk space and never need Tor than need Tor and not have it installed.

In my personal life, I actually do use Tor quite often, funnily enough. I’ve found that sometimes, websites that block me for using a VPN will actually function normally if I access them via Tor. This isn’t always the case, but it’s the case often enough to be useful to me.

Last I checked, “gateway” isn’t an official term in Tor, so I’m not sure what that refers to. It could be a bridge, proxy, one of those clearnet sites that allows you to view onion sites, or something else entirely. I’m going to assume whatever it refers to isn’t something I bring up.

Aside from what you already listed (assuming you are excluding financial support and code contributions, which are obvious), you can run a Snowflake proxy. There’s official documentation about doing so using the browser extension, embedding it in your own website(s), or standalone. You can also run a Snowflake proxy using Orbot.