Does the latest Monero release (Nov 2019) contain I2P and Tor only in CLI or in the GUI too?

Question

Win 10 user, PC, trying to setup Daemon on a local hard drive. Before I do, I want to know about the privacy options regarding IP addresses when using a node.

1. Does the latest Monero release, to run your own daemon, contain support for I2P and Tor?
2. Is it only the GUI, CLI or both?
3. For a regular non computer geeky type of user, is it easy to learn the CLI and is that the better one for privacy? I was going to use GUI for simplicity, but if the CLI has better privacy then I'll learn that.
4. Just to be clear, so I understand, is support for I2P and Tor included in the latest daemon? Can you run it on clearnet from home and your ISP won't know you're connecting to other Monero daemons?
5. Do you still need to use Whonix or Tails for total privacy with latest release of the GUI or CLI?

Some questions about general use of Monero on clearnet without the privacy of Tor:

5. If using from home, and setting up a daemon on a PC hard drive, when does your ISP actually record connections to Monero? I mean does downloading the blockchain mean there is a connection to Monero even before you use the wallet?

6. For privacy concesious usage, is it best to download the blockchain to my PC before getting the GUI and CLI or should it be done at the same time? I thought that downloading the blockchain first might be more secure.. but not sure.

Cheers!

Answer 1

Actually, tor/i2p support has been in Monero since the previous release, not just the last one.

With regards to your specific questions:

1. The releases don't "contain" tor/i2p, rather they have options available to integrate with a local tor/i2p router to broadcast transactions over tor/i2p. See ANONYMITY_NETWORKS and README.
2. The settings are in the daemon. Therefore anything that uses the daemon (which is both GUI & CLI wallets), can use these options.
3. This is subjective. Some people will find the GUI simpler and some the CLI. The official GUI and CLI both offer the same levels of privacy.
4. The answer here depends. If you are using the built-in tor/i2p options, this is specifically for transaction broadcasting as of now. The functionality is present to help prevent linking a transaction to an IP address. Syncing blocks would still occur over clearnet.
5. They could - and that's the point. If you need to hide the fact you are even running Monero, you will need to route all your traffic through tor/i2p. This can be configured in your operating system (see the README).
6. When you say "download the blockchain" I assume you mean the raw blockchain file, and no, there is no privacy benefit to downloading this before downloading the CLI/GUI. There really is no benefit to that raw file at all these days - it was provided at a time when syncing the blockchain in the daemon was on the slow side - nowadays the sync speed has been significantly increased.