Worried I won't be able to access this site due to my stupid government.

[genie]

In the past year I've seen my country go from having a free, open internet into a totalitarian nightmare. Now they're saying you may have to show ID at device level to access social media. And the UK government are looking at VPNs. VPN is the only way I can access this site. If it is restricted to over 18s and you have to provide ID to use one, that defeats the purpose. The VPN is compromised and they could block this site. I would lose all my support networks. Funnily enough, this is actually making me want to CTB more than ever. I do not want to live in this dystopian, totalitarian nightmare. I'm going to start getting my affairs in order.

 

[Yakui]

same here. i have always hated this country and every new restriction just increases my hatred towards it.

 

[LastNite]

Get tor browser and access it from there. It is made to avoid government censorship or get mullvad vpn. If you want a good free VPN then look for riseup vpn idk if it's supported on mobile though. It's open source I believe.

 

[fadedghost]

In the past year I've seen my country go from having a free, open internet into a totalitarian nightmare. Now they're saying you may have to show ID at device level to access social media. And the UK government are looking at VPNs. VPN is the only way I can access this site. If it is restricted to over 18s and you have to provide ID to use one, that defeats the purpose. The VPN is compromised and they could block this site. I would lose all my support networks. Funnily enough, this is actually making me want to CTB more than ever. I do not want to live in this dystopian, totalitarian nightmare. I'm going to start getting my affairs in order.

So without giving you advice, which may be illegal, they can only do so much.

have you considered learning more about networking?

There are network protocols that they can't block without blocking corporate America and blocking the internet. To really ban "VPNs," they could try to do something like DPI, but even with DPI, there's still things that make it hard unless you want to break the internet entirely.

 

[Dandelion's]

Hey you could use a tor bridge instead of a vpn if the VPN gets banned

 

[Pluto]

 

[Spite]

Yeah, I worry about this too. I'm in Australia and whatever the UK does Australia tends to follow in their footsteps. Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if the Australian government will eventually just straight up ban access to this site entirely at some point in the future. Which would also make me more suicidal because this site really feels like the only place on the entire Internet where I can express my true thoughts, where I can go to vent without fear of being judged and antagonised.

 

[fadedghost]

Hey you could use a tor bridge instead of a vpn if the VPN gets banned

they could probably ban tor and may be able to use dpi to detetct bridges. @EmptyBottle would know

There are fundamental protocols, fundamental to the internet, that can't be blocked unless most of the internet is blocked.

Vpns and tor can be detected with dpi and also by ip lists. But dpi can't block everything like fundamental parts of how the internet works and then has to revert to "is it a vpn ip"? So if it's not a known vpn ip and uses a regular internet pritocol, how can they detect it?

ive already given a lot of hints. Lots of protocols are encrypted.

Ask @EmptyBottle

But i am not sure tor bridges withstand dpi. Like there are some countries to my knowledge that successfully block almost all protocols.

 

[EmptyBottle]

they could probably ban tor and may be able to use dpi to detetct bridges. @EmptyBottle would know

There are fundamental protocols, fundamental to the internet, that can't be blocked unless most of the internet is blocked.

Vpns and tor can be detected with dpi and also by ip lists. But dpi can't block everything like fundamental parts of how the internet works and then has to revert to "is it a vpn ip"? So if it's not a known vpn ip and uses a regular internet pritocol, how can they detect it?

ive already given a lot of hints. Lots of protocols are encrypted.

Ask @EmptyBottle

But i am not sure tor bridges withstand dpi. Like there are some countries to my knowledge that successfully block almost all protocols.

dpi might not be able to easily detect certain bridges, like webtunnel bridges, if they do not hold long term connections open (eg the client randomly decides to change/alternate bridges after mere minutes) and do other things to blend in.

However, there could be weaknesses in the bridge designs... eg if a client rotates connections mainly every 10 minutes, over time that statistic may reveal bridges slowly... with some false positives. The censor can also manually seek bridges to use and block too!

Somewhere in this video, tor said it once used a custom prime for tls setup, lead to bridge detection...took tor some weeks to detect and fix it (spoiler to prevent autoloading YT):

Spoiler

 

[fadedghost]

dpi might not be able to easily detect certain bridges, like webtunnel bridges, if they do not hold long term connections open (eg the client randomly decides to change/alternate bridges after mere minutes) and do other things to blend in.

However, there could be weaknesses in the bridge designs... eg if a client rotates connections mainly every 10 minutes, over time that statistic may reveal bridges slowly... with some false positives. The censor can also manually seek bridges to use and block too!

Somewhere in this video, tor said it once used a custom prime for tls setup, lead to bridge detection...took tor some weeks to detect and fix it (spoiler to prevent autoloading YT):

Spoiler

But why should someone worried even rely on bridges?

In a more censored world, what protocol would you use?

@EmptyBottle You know the right answer. The best way to defeat censorship, right?

Are they going to block I.T.?

 

[EmptyBottle]

But why should someone worried even rely on bridges?

Because being prepared for censorship is helpful if censorship eventually occurs... if it doesn't... it's still practicing "best practice".

In a more censored world, what protocol would you use?

Probably snowflake/webtunnel. From tests, my own onion does better with snowflake than other proxies... as well as mobile hotspot runs it better than wifi... but idk why the latter is the case.

@EmptyBottle You know the right answer. The best way to defeat censorship, right?

I think the best way is using Tor, MullVad/Windscribe and similar... tho there may be better ways so I can't be certain.

Are they going to block I.T.?

Seems unlikely that IT will be blocked outright, it has too much economic potential. However, I am concerned by the rise of ID verification for online services... identity is already established at the ISP, which is enough imo.