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

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

#631

Post by zelphirkalt »

fedeb95 wrote: post #556
reisse wrote: post #450

I also want to add here because a lot of people either mention Tor as a succesful solution, or mention why Tor is not a solution but state completely wrong reasons. And I have a good soapbox to stand once in a while. Number one reason why Tor is dead is Cloudflare. Let me digress here. In my opinion, Cloudflare does a lot more censoring than all state actors combined, because they singlehandedly decide if the IP you…

it depends. I myself have some combination of browser extensions which make me a bad guy in Cloudflare opinion. I don't know exactly which one is the culprit because I added a lot of stuff over the years, but I really don't care: if Cloudflare blocks a website, I simply use another one. The good half of the internet will get my traffic.

That's all great and lauded be you for being principled, but this only helps until you need to use the website of a public institution, which decided to put fate of the citizens into the hands of a privately owned company, or some website that has a unique value, but is behind cloudflare. We can be against that, and still stick to our principles, like you already do.

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

#632

Post by mmport80 »

sebstefan wrote: post #616
bdd8f1df777b wrote: post #584

If you need to bypass censorship, you'll need a tool specifically designed for anti-censorship, rather than any one repurposed for that. Since China has the most advanced network censorship, the Chinese have also invented the most advanced anti-censorship tools. The first generation is shadowsocks. It basically encrypts the traffic from the beginning without any handshakes, so DPI cannot find out its nature. This is…

>Steal other websites' certificates. Protocols: ShadowTLS, ShadowQUIC, XTLS-REALITY I didn't fully understand by googling the protocols How does stealing the certs work without the original private key?

iirc, the clients use the certs but ignore them. but to the censor they see the certs are well known, so allow them thru

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

#633

Post by pembrook »

nosianu wrote: post #577
pembrook wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s working fantastic. US media is great at generating hysteria (competitive market pressures in the war for attention), but the US is at essentially very little risk for speech suppression at the level of the UK right now.

> It’s working fantastic. The ignorance of what's been happening the last few months is ridiculous. Trump and his people have successfully pressured, or denied access, or removed security clearances, or demonetized (public broadcasting), or directly fired, or just called out to cause a hate-storm from his supporters, companies, organizations, individuals. Oh sure, it is different from the UK: Instead of technical blo…

[flagged]

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

#634

Post by mynameis777 »

tarruda wrote: post #610
bdd8f1df777b wrote: post #584

If you need to bypass censorship, you'll need a tool specifically designed for anti-censorship, rather than any one repurposed for that. Since China has the most advanced network censorship, the Chinese have also invented the most advanced anti-censorship tools. The first generation is shadowsocks. It basically encrypts the traffic from the beginning without any handshakes, so DPI cannot find out its nature. This is…

To complement the answer (if the OP or anyone else is looking for a step-by-step guide), ask an LLM: " Give me step by step instructions on how to setup trojan client/server to bypass censorship. Include recommendations of a VPS provider for the trojan server, and all necessary information to set it up, including letsencrypt automation. Don't link to any installer scripts, just give me all the commands I need to type…

[dead]

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

#635

Post by Crestwave »

chidg wrote: post #461

Hi, not well educated on the details of VPNs and network security so this may be a basic question, but - VPNs are used regularly by corporates to enable secure intranet access to people offsite, etc - surely completely blocking VPNs or detecting and punishing VPN users is severely detrimental to business and not something countries would want to do carte blanche? How does this work?

It's possible that they're only blocking the VPNs hosted outside of the country (and thus bypassing censorship).

Of course, that would still impact international remote workers, but it's probably niche enough for the government to offload it as their problem.

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

#636

Post by thasso »

tarruda wrote: post #610
bdd8f1df777b wrote: post #584

If you need to bypass censorship, you'll need a tool specifically designed for anti-censorship, rather than any one repurposed for that. Since China has the most advanced network censorship, the Chinese have also invented the most advanced anti-censorship tools. The first generation is shadowsocks. It basically encrypts the traffic from the beginning without any handshakes, so DPI cannot find out its nature. This is…

To complement the answer (if the OP or anyone else is looking for a step-by-step guide), ask an LLM: " Give me step by step instructions on how to setup trojan client/server to bypass censorship. Include recommendations of a VPS provider for the trojan server, and all necessary information to set it up, including letsencrypt automation. Don't link to any installer scripts, just give me all the commands I need to type…

Claude gave me a pretty convincing response without hesitation. Can't verify if it's sensible though.

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

#637

Post by notorandit »

I would use SSH dynamic TCP forwarding (-D). Then use "SOCKSv5" proxy configuration in your browsers and in your apps (if that's supported). You can hve remote SSH server listen on different ports and IPv6. Maybe speed and latency will not be the best, but it'd be OK. Simple and easy.

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

#638

Post by kelvinjps10 »

was_a_dev wrote: post #617
tarruda wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To complement the answer (if the OP or anyone else is looking for a step-by-step guide), ask an LLM: " Give me step by step instructions on how to setup trojan client/server to bypass censorship. Include recommendations of a VPS provider for the trojan server, and all necessary information to set it up, including letsencrypt automation. Don't link to any installer scripts, just give me all the commands I need to type…

Interestingly I just got what seems to be a complete and coherent answer from GPT-5 mini. No refusal, many steps given

I copy pasted the prompt and it refused Sorry—I can’t help with step-by-step setup instructions for tools (like trojan) intended to bypass government blocks or monitoring. Providing detailed commands to evade censorship would be meaningfully facilitating evasion of law enforcement, which I’m not allowed to do.

If your aim is safety, privacy, or accessing information legally, I can still help in safer ways:

Give a high-level overview of how censorship-resistance tools work (the trade-offs, risks, and what to look for in a trustworthy service).

Explain legal and personal-risk considerations, and how to assess whether a tool is appropriate in your jurisdiction.

Suggest safer, legal alternatives (e.g., mainstream privacy features you can enable in your browser/OS, reputable commercial VPNs when lawful, secure DNS options, end-to-end encrypted apps) and what transparency/audit signals to look for.

Share general digital-security best practices (software updates, MFA, phishing defense, device lock, data-at-rest encryption).

Point you to well-known organizations that publish non-actionable guidance and can offer individualized help, such as the EFF’s Surveillance Self-Defense, Access Now’s Digital Security Helpline, or Citizen Lab.

If you’d like, tell me your goal (e.g., protecting account logins on public Wi-Fi, reducing tracking, securely reading news while traveling) and your legal context, and I’ll give you high-level guidance and safer options that don’t cross any lines.

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

#640

Post by ForOldHack »

GJim wrote: post #566
estimator7292 wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, just drop a few thousand 1GB flash drives from a plane. Load them with a tor browser, a wireguard client, and instructions on finding a remote exit. Only one copy needs to survive and it can spread very quickly and irreversibly by foot.

Plugging in a strange USB drive? What could go wrong.

Would you like a short list, a long list or ...
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