Is there any advantage to using the OpenVPN app and the Chrome extension AT THE SAME TIME?

PIAcustomer17

Was just wondering, what is, if any, the advantage of this setup, and do you do this yourself?
First, you run OpenVPN on my Windows 10 pc and after its connected to say Switzerland via UDP with recommended encryption,
AND THEN you load up Chrome and use the PIA VPN extension in Chrome to connect to Sweden.

So, effectively its a encrypted tunnel from my pc to PIA's Switzerland server, and then, its another tunnel from Switserland to PIA's server in Sweden.
So any http or https request i make from my Chrome browser, will therefore have the external IP of the Swedish server.
Does this help any if the goal is to render traffic analysis of netflow to unmask users a bit more difficult to an adversary watching the traffic for analysis?

the14eyesarewatching

No, that's useless 'cause you're using the same VPN provider; you should select a different VPN on Chrome to somehow add a layer of anonymity.

Said that, Chrome and Windows 10 sports the WORST TELEMETRY TRACKING BULT-IN -- in layman's words you're not only still being tracked but you are being unequivocally identified both by Microcrap and Googlebrother, congratz!

PIAcustomer17

Hmm, sure there is some advantage to using a different vpn extension provider, thats equally trustworthy as PIA. The chrome extension VPN should basically work like an SSLVPN for the browser. So, the concept of tunnel within tunnel is quite interesting from a technical point view even if i dont really have a scenario where thats necessary in my case. I have read on stackexchange of the idea of tunnels within tunnels with regards to running a VPN on the host machine,and then opening up another VPN in Virtualbox, which actually works lol 
The question of multi-hop arises because as you all may know, NordVPN which is right up in the top 5 VPN's which security-conscious people trust along with PIA, has these multi-hop servers, and even though its the same VPN provider, it DOES make it difficult for netflow analysis or traffic correlation.
Of course if you are worried about a nation state, then perhaps you are better off using a VPN+tor or whonix or some such esoteric combo. 
And yes, Chrome can be hardened and while its not as provacy conscious as firefox, its faster and for going around geoblocking in my country, it works. Also, one should look up tutorials for hardening Win10 and disabling the windows update in services.msc and other privacy related settings to minimize the communication with Microsoft servers. Of course, you could always use something like Ubuntu, but its not something that i am comfortable in, so i try to minimize the harm that Win10 does while using it.

i90rr

@PIAcustomer17 On GNU+Linux there is LXC -- Linux containers - which are low-level virtualization pods that let you do tons of magic like having multiple virtual NICs, each one with its own VPN all enabled at the same time. So, in theory (I yet have to test this) you could be routing a browser traffic through one VPN, another browser through other VPN, terminal traffic through other VPN and so on.

I'm not sure if this is possible with any of the BSD though (including Mac) but it will be fun to find out!