Ask HN: The government of my country blocked VPN access. What should I use? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: The government of my country blocked VPN access. What should I use?

#61

Post by GlacierFox » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 6:27 PM UTC

nomilk wrote: post #43

Australia and UK might soon go down this path. Something quite depressing is if we (HN crowd) find workarounds, most regular folks won't have the budget/expertise to do so, so citizen journalism will have been successfully muted by government / big media.

I would have laughed in your face if you wrote this comment merely 6 months ago. Now I'm just depressed. (UK)

Re: Ask HN: The government of my country blocked VPN access. What should I use?

#62

Post by reisse » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 6:27 PM UTC

sturza wrote: post #2

Mullvad

Mullvad doesn't really have any modern censorship circumvention options.

Re: Ask HN: The government of my country blocked VPN access. What should I use?

#63

Post by TimCTRL » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 6:29 PM UTC

I can relate to this because my country has an election soon and I'm sure we wont have internet for 3 - 5 days then.

Re: Ask HN: The government of my country blocked VPN access. What should I use?

#64

Post by weinzierl » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 6:30 PM UTC

Humorist2290 wrote: post #14

- Tor. Pros: Reasonably user friendly and easy to get online, strong anonymity, free. Cons: a common target for censorship, not very fast, exit nodes are basically universally distrusted by websites. - Tailscale with Mullvad exit nodes. Pros: little setup but not more than installing and configuring a program, faster than Got, very versatile. Cons: deep packet inspection can probably identify your traffic is using Mu…

This is good overview, I just wanted to add that a VPS IP is not a residential IP. You will encounter roadblocks when you try to access services if you appear to be coming from a VPS. Not that I had a better solution, just to clarify what you can expect.

Re: Ask HN: The government of my country blocked VPN access. What should I use?

#65

Post by guluarte » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 6:30 PM UTC

SSH tunneling on port 80 could work since it's rarely blocked, rent a cheap vps.

Re: Ask HN: The government of my country blocked VPN access. What should I use?

#66

Post by whalesalad » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 6:30 PM UTC

SSH SOCKS proxy if you have an SSH host somewhere that is not Indonesia.

Re: Ask HN: The government of my country blocked VPN access. What should I use?

#67

Post by reisse » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 6:30 PM UTC

You've come to a wrong place to ask. Most people here (judging by recommendations of own VPN instances, Tor, Tailscale/other Wireguard-based VPNs, and Mullvad) don't have any experience with censorship circumvention.

Just look for any VPNs that are advertised specifically for China, Russia, or Iran. These are the cutting edge tech, they may not be so privacy-friendly as Mullvad, but they will certainly work.

Re: Ask HN: The government of my country blocked VPN access. What should I use?

#68

Post by codethief » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 6:31 PM UTC

Humorist2290 wrote: post #14

- Tor. Pros: Reasonably user friendly and easy to get online, strong anonymity, free. Cons: a common target for censorship, not very fast, exit nodes are basically universally distrusted by websites. - Tailscale with Mullvad exit nodes. Pros: little setup but not more than installing and configuring a program, faster than Got, very versatile. Cons: deep packet inspection can probably identify your traffic is using Mu…

> - Tailscale with Mullvad exit nodes

Tailscale is completely unnecessary here, unless OP can't connect to Mullvad.net in the first place to sign up. But if the Indonesian government blocks Mullvad nodes, they'll be out of luck either way.

> - Your own VPSs with Wireguard/Tailscale

Keep in mind that from the POV of any websites you visit, you will be easily identifiable due to your static IP.

My suggestion would be to rent a VPS outside Indonesia, set up Mullvad or Tor on the VPS and route all traffic through that VPS (and thereby through Mullvad/Tor). The fastest way to set up the latter across devices is probably to use the VPS as Tailscale exit node.

Re: Ask HN: The government of my country blocked VPN access. What should I use?

#69

Post by liveoneggs » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 6:31 PM UTC

All the various proxy solutions offered are good (although the simplest ones - like squid - haven't been mentioned yet). You can also use a remote desktop or even just ssh -Y me@remote-server "firefox"

Re: Ask HN: The government of my country blocked VPN access. What should I use?

#70

Post by kevindamm » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 6:31 PM UTC

pmlnr wrote: post #18

defulmere wrote: post #11

SOCKS proxy over SSH?

Android doesn't come with system wide socks proxy support, and i couldn't find an open source app for it either. Is anyone aware of one? Nonetheless this is a surprisingly simple and bullet proof solution: SSH, that's not vpn boss, i need it for work.

Outline is an open source shadowsocks client, and you provision your own server to act as the proxy. You can use it against any Shadowsocks server you want, and the protocol makes it look like regular https traffic.

https://github.com/Jigsaw-Code/outline-apps

Android & iOS & Linux & Mac & Windows

their server installer will help set up a proxy for users that aren't familiar with shadowsocks, too