Internet safety concern

Hello,

I am a newly registered member, I am deeply sorry if my question seems dumb.. but!
As I became familiar with the term "Internet Privacy" I noticed that VPN is just the first line of defence. For a number of times I've seen people saying that VPN will not provide me with safe browsing and I should have a Private Proxy.
Obviously, this forum provides some information about these proxies -
https://www.blackhatworld.com/forums/proxies-for-sale.112

I am just not quite capable of understand one thing.. lets say that I have a VPN. The way it works is by changing my IP, right? So, how does proxy improve me safety and should I use it along with VPN or INSTEAD of it?

Thanks.

Depends on what you want to achieve.

For privacy and anonymity, a VPN is the right choice.

Private proxies are mainly used for automation and marketing tasks.

To enhance your privacy on top of a VPN connection, you should try a provider that offers Tor over VPN. In this way, your whole traffic gets to the VPN server first and then routed through various Tor nodes.

just grab a decent vpn like ip-vanish and u should be good to go
for most general pc work, as chris said people tend to use
proxies for alot of seo work/tools

Oh my, thats a lot of informations!!. Thank you both!!

Chris.Roark said:

you should try a provider that offers Tor over VPN. In this way, your whole traffic gets to the VPN server first and then routed through various Tor nodes.

Click to expand...

So should I use e.g. VPN + Tor or a VPN that uses Tor? If the second one - which one do you suggest?
Thanks!

I suggest the first one, use them independently, first connect to a VPN and then use the Tor Browser. Because Tor over VPN (VPN that uses tor) as a feature will eliminate the first Tor node and use their own, so instead of having 3 tor nodes per connection, you end up with two.

This is the case of ProtonVPN (if I remember correctly), their Tor over VPN feature sends your traffic not to the first random Tor node (your guard node), but to their one Tor node kept on their servers.

Thus, I think it's better to connect first to your VPN and then use the Tor browser to create a new Tor connection on top of your VPN one.