The important part of the diagram for Tor is the first NSA character, as you can see it still shows "Location" before you are routed through the Tor relay.

With the location information it is possible to correlate the exit information via pattern matching, though it would take considerable analysis, this can be done by logging volume and timing information on the two sides. I am sure there are even better techniques to analyze exit/entry correlations, especially if you're not using a secure browser.

So having a private VPS doesn't really matter, in fact it can make matters worse because you are adding layers that can be "watched" before you hit an entry node, the more data that can be logged the easier it is to track.

You're best option is to choose random nodes, connect at random times and also look into using Tor bridges. If possible using several different IPS's or even better random wi-fi hotspots, though this is hardly convenient for most users.

Tor bridges: https://www.torproject.org/docs/bridges.html.en

Whitepaper on Tor passive logging attacks (pdf): http://people.cs.umass.edu/~mwright/papers/wright-passive.pd...