In the long run, starlink will make it even harder for autocrat regimes to censor the internet. Russian authorities already try to ban connections to Starlink.
Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal
41–50 of 417 posts
Re: Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal
#42If everyone announces their proxies the Iranian government will be monitoring those announcements and will be able to block traffic to them. It may be better for those with friends and family in Iran to run proxies and quietly inform only people they trust.
Re: Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal
#43> You can share your proxy with friends and family using this URL format: " rel="nofollow">https://signal.tube/# […] The latest beta release of the Android app is registered to handle links from signal.tube.
This scheme is convenient for those with correctly configured devices, but comes at the cost to everyone else of increased risk of inadvertent leaks of the fact that they're attempting to circumvent the block. I'd be interested to hear more about what factored into the decision to make this trade-off.
Re: Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Too bad, the Signal devs love centralization. One day people will realize Signal is just not the right solution for what they actually need.
The problem with this is that Signal is a huge success right now where other federated chat platforms have fallen. Sure, something like Matrix might win the war eventually but by being centralized Signal shipped and is providing a useful service to millions of people today.
There are lots of problems in matrix that hinder its adoption, federation is likely not the biggest of them.
Re: Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal
#45If everyone announces their proxies the Iranian government will be monitoring those announcements and will be able to block traffic to them. It may be better for those with friends and family in Iran to run proxies and quietly inform only people they trust.
Not to mention you can get into significant legal trouble helping people sanctioned by the US.
Re: Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the trick isn't it: having an entire population know something an oppressive government doesn't. Even if you teach everyone how to deploy their own servers, then that's the knowledge the government will start targeting. You can make blocks expensive, i.e. blocking other major, useful services that would disrupt society too much for them to want to deal with, but this of course has its own costs. It's censorshi…
As far as I know, Iran is much too open an society to actually prevent its citizens from knowing anything in particular. That's not to say it's a free society or that censorship doesn't exist there, just that it's not the sort of regime that is particularly good at it. If I had to guess, Iranian expats would be a likely set of people to start up proxy servers for their family and friends back home.
Yes, which is why Signal is doing a disservice by telling people to announce their proxies on Twitter. The expats should just tell their friends and family, and tell them to pass the word on only to people they trust.
Re: Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal
#47Wouldn't Briar be a good choice? https://briarproject.org/
Re: Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal
#48Damn, I've read the code. This won't work against an active probe. Censors just use signal domains and non-signal domains to test your proxy. If signal domains get passed and non-signal domains got denied, you are fucked. Besides, TLS in TLS is highly identifiable by simple packet length dpi. I'd hope there's better plan.
> Censors just use signal domains and non-signal domains to test your proxy. If the censor already knows about your proxy they would have no reason to test it... The whole point is that there isn't a central list of proxies for them to easily block.
[deleted]
Re: Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal
#49hey. i just thought of something. is it not possible for india or iran in this case to check your phone number and see if it is active on signal? if you are online means you are somehow bypassing their blocks. isnt then just a matter of tracking your cellphone and relevant xkcd applies ? https://xkcd.com/538/ this is looking like a zero sum game unless signal account is delinked from phone numbers because the govt ca…
> is it not possible for india or iran in this case to check your phone number and see if it is active on signal?
WTF, why does signal require PII to use? Shouldn't it give you a public/private key pair on signup?
Re: Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal
#50How would you let users know about this proxy without letting their government know about it? Instead of platforms like twitter, how about randomly giving out random proxies in some header that the app could query on cloudflare or google or akamai? Does Signal already make use of any CDN's for out-of-band signalling and fail-over? If the Signal proxy could expose an obfuscated load metric, then the CDN could pick ano…
I think Signal is clearly recognising that nearly sny server or system they create will be blocked, which is why they recommended this being done on an individual layer. From the article: > A more discrete approach would be to only send the link via a DM or a non-public message. You can post something like this on your favorite social network: > * #IRanASignalProxy Reply to this thread if you want the connection deta…
No good; people working for the Iranian state will DM. Signal didn't think this through. No one should announce proxies via social media. Tell people how to set one up for friends and family.