HN Explorer

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

1338 points by rickybule ↗ HN
Indonesia is currently in chaos. Earlier today, the government blocked access to Twitter & Discord knowing news spread mainly through those channels. Usually we can use Cloudflare's WARP to avoid it, but just today they blocked the access as well. What alternative should we use?

213 comments

[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 114 ms ] thread
diggan
Tor should be pretty good even for environments where they crack down on VPNs, although it can be a bit slow, at least it works.
lemper
megavpn, should be around a dollar a month for 5 devices.
rthnbgrredf
In case known VPN providers are blocked you can pick a small VPS from a hoster like Hetzner and setup your own VPN.
jszymborski
Folks who are looking to bypass censorship, and those who live in countries where their internet connection is not currently censored who would like to help, can look to https://snowflake.torproject.org/
Aachen
Aren't there local (online or print) newspapers to get news from, as an alternative to Discord? Hope I'm not asking a dumb question
reactordev
localtunnel.me, some node in the cloud, tunnel…
jszymborski
Mastodon is not easy for regimes to completely block, and most instances won't block you for using Tor. Mastodon saw a huge migration from Brazil when X was blocked there.

https://joinmastodon.org/

acuozzo
Grab a VPS and use SOCKS5 tunneling via SSH.
Humorist2290
- 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 Mullvad, costs some money.

- Your own VPSs with Wireguard/Tailscale. Pros: max control, you control how fast you want it, you can share with people you care about (and are willing to support). Cons: the admin effort isn't huge but requires some skill, cost is flexible but probably 20-30$ per month minimum in hosting.

herodoturtle
On a related note, does anyone have insight into *why* the Indonesian government is doing this?
yogorenapan
WireGuard should still work. Tons of different providers. I trust Mullvad but ProtonVPN has a free tier. If they start blocking WireGuard, check out v2ray and xray-core. If those get blocked... that means somehow they're restricting all HTTPS traffic going out of the country
Joel_Mckay
There are many options, but avoiding the legal consequences may be a grey area:

https://www.stunnel.org/index.html

https://github.com/yarrick/iodine

https://infocondb.org/con/black-hat/black-hat-usa-2010/psudp...

..and many many more, as networks see reduced throughput as an error to naturally route around. =3

wdroz
DNS tunnels with iodine works well, it's easy to setup and work in a lot of place.

You can also connect to some random corporate wifi and it's very likely that this will work (not necessary in "direct" mode).

doix
I'm currently traveling in Uzbekistan and am surprised that wireguard as a protocol is just blocked. I use wireguard with my own server, because usually governments just block well known VPN providers and a small individual server is fine.

It's the first time I've encountered where the entire protocol is just blocked. Worth checking what is blocked and how before deciding which VPN provider to use.

varenc
Is it the protocol that's blocked as a result of DPI, or just the default 51820 UDP port that's blocked? If the latter, just changing your Wireguard server's port might work.
scotty79
Maybe you could buy VPS in another country and set up VPN server yourself?
drake99
In this scenario, Chinese have very rich experience. you need to use the advance proxy tool like clash ,v2ray, shadowsocks etc.
roscas
Blocking Twitter is a good start, now Facebook, Instagram, Whatsup and TikTok.

This is a good start but more should be blocked. Then force ISP to block ads.

Not just for Indonesia but all countries. But we still have a lot more to do to fix the web.

SirMaster
Remote desktop (RDP/AnyDesk/etc) into a VM hosted somewhere else?
nomilk
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.

ranger_danger
> most regular folks won't have the budget/expertise to do so

I think this (incorrectly) assumes that nobody will ever capitalize on easy (and free/cheap) access to workarounds and advertise it far and wide.

Jigsy
I was wondering something like this but in a different capacity.

What with certain countries (they know who they are) and their hatred for encryption, it got me wondering how people would communicate securely if - for example - Signal/WhatsApp/etc. pulled out and the country wound up disconnecting the submarine cables to "keep $MORAL_PANIC_OF_THE_DAY safe."

How would people communicate securely and privately in a domestic situation like that?

whyleyc
I'd recommend using Outline - it's a one click setup that lets you provision your own VPN on a cloud provider (or your own hardware).

Since you get to pick where the hardware is located and it is just you (or you and a small group of friends & family) using the VPN, blocking is more difficult.

If you don't want the hassle of using your own hardware you can rent a Digital Ocean droplet for <$5 per month.

https://getoutline.org/