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Imgur geo-blocked the UK, so I geo-unblocked my network

blog.tymscar.com

41–50 of 194 posts

Re: Imgur geo-blocked the UK, so I geo-unblocked my network

#41
post #39

> First, I just upgraded to 2.5 Gbps internet and I don’t want to route all my traffic through a VPN and take the speed hit. I have this bandwidth for a reason You don't have to. You create a container which runs openvpn to connect to your vpn provider, and also hosts an ssh daemon. The ssh daemon receives incoming SOCKS5 connections from a firefox portable browser, which has been configured to use the proxy (your Do…

[deleted]

Re: Imgur geo-blocked the UK, so I geo-unblocked my network

#43

> Second, even if I installed a VPN on my main machine, what about my phone? My laptop? My desktop? Every device would need the VPN running, and I’d have to remember to connect it before browsing. It’s messy. This is what routers are for. My router (a cheap fanless box with several network ports running linux) is the only thing on my network that knows there's a VPN. I can selectively route whatever I want through it…

> a cheap fanless box with several network ports running linux

Do you remember the name of the product?

Re: Imgur geo-blocked the UK, so I geo-unblocked my network

#44

> Second, even if I installed a VPN on my main machine, what about my phone? My laptop? My desktop? Every device would need the VPN running, and I’d have to remember to connect it before browsing. It’s messy. This is what routers are for. My router (a cheap fanless box with several network ports running linux) is the only thing on my network that knows there's a VPN. I can selectively route whatever I want through it…

You can just use FoxyProxy instead of a separate browser instance. This firefox addon will use a proxy based on URL patterns.

Re: Imgur geo-blocked the UK, so I geo-unblocked my network

#45

This is quite easy with OpenWRT. Install the Wireguard packages, create a connection to your VPN of choice in a nearby country (I chose Sweden). Then I used the "vpn-policy-routing" package to route Imgur IPs (199.232.196.193 199.232.192.193) through the VPN. Works for websites that keep nagging you for age verification too. But seriously, it's been more emotional than I'd expected to get my cat memes back.

Yeah, doing it with OpenWRT and PBR is definately much simpler than this approach. However by using hard-coded IP addresses you are at risk of breakage if they change in the future.

Also fastly-hosted services are a bit awkard to configure IP ranges to cover whole blocks as they seem to not use normal CIDR-blocks for different customers.

But you use PBR's ntfset functionality to have your dns server automatically update a set whenever an DNS entry is resolved, then set the policy rules based on the set.

Re: Imgur geo-blocked the UK, so I geo-unblocked my network

#46
post #39

> First, I just upgraded to 2.5 Gbps internet and I don’t want to route all my traffic through a VPN and take the speed hit. I have this bandwidth for a reason You don't have to. You create a container which runs openvpn to connect to your vpn provider, and also hosts an ssh daemon. The ssh daemon receives incoming SOCKS5 connections from a firefox portable browser, which has been configured to use the proxy (your Do…

This is a great idea except for me (and for the author I suspect) I regularly come across attachment of Imgur hosted images on sites (like a post on a DIY forum but not all of them) so it wouldn't solve my issue unless I were to use your browser in the container all the time (I suspect the author also doesn't just 'surf imgur' but randomly comes across images hosted on imgur linked to from other locations).

Re: Imgur geo-blocked the UK, so I geo-unblocked my network

#49
post #39

> First, I just upgraded to 2.5 Gbps internet and I don’t want to route all my traffic through a VPN and take the speed hit. I have this bandwidth for a reason You don't have to. You create a container which runs openvpn to connect to your vpn provider, and also hosts an ssh daemon. The ssh daemon receives incoming SOCKS5 connections from a firefox portable browser, which has been configured to use the proxy (your Do…

That doesn't seem very practical. The issue is that imgur links are everywhere and you wouldn't want to switch browsers whenever you encounter one. Not to mention it requires per device setup. Author's solution is much better than what you describe.

Re: Imgur geo-blocked the UK, so I geo-unblocked my network

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A service shutting down, or being replaced is very different to one being blocked at a country level because of waves hands things

> waves hands things government censorship called it for what it is

The Online Safety Act is clear-cut censorship but that's not why Imgur left the UK. They were facing fines for violating the UKs data protection laws, specifically a set of rules that were introduced years before the OSA was even passed. Their parent company hasn't pulled any of their other services from the UK either, which you'd expect them to do if their goal was to protest or avoid the OSA.
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