Comment by willvarfar
3 days ago
1 = no privacy from relay
2 = risk of collusion between relays
3 = goldilocks default
4 = ... actually, you have more attack surface and you are more susceptible to fingerprinting because everybody else is using 3, so you're timings etc help identify you
So the default is 3 and nobody ought change it! Use 3 like everybody else.
The exception is .onion sites. TOR actually deliberately defaults to 6 hops when accessing .oninon sites - 3 to protect you and 3 to project the site.
There's no exit nodes for onions because there's nothing to exit to. Nothing beats anonymity of onions and it's design is well created.
That reminds me of the holy Handgranate of the Monty pythons
The right number for you to use is the default. But the right default is not necessarily 3.