What to wish to users from Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus? VPN blocking

[tolerancetolerance]

Already blocked 7 VPN services. Tomorrow, Roskomnadzor may block 11 more VPN services VPN Proxy Master, VPN-Super Unlimited Proxy, Proton VPN and eight lesser known ones.

 

[CheeseMoon]

I'm surprised The Gestapo the PKH dickheads took this long to block the usual VPN services. Roskomnadzor's job is to censor, limit and pretend the world is different from what it actually is, so this should come as no surprise. Not sure why all this matters for users in Belarus and Russia anyway, since it's almost impossible for them to pay you.

Or did I miss something?

 

[NotYou]

What about the Opera browser? It has a builtin VPN for you to use, not sure if they are already blocked for you?
Maybe worth trying. Not sure if everything (lovense for example) works ok on there or not though)

 

[CheeseMoon]

What about the Opera browser? It has a builtin VPN for you to use, not sure if they are already blocked for you?
Maybe worth trying. Not sure if everything (lovense for example) works ok on there or not though)

Opera's "VPN" isn't really a VPN and is not safe to use. It just redirects the traffic from and to your Opera browser through another IP address somewhere in the world. The traffic isn't encrypted (i.e. no tunneling) and whatever else you do on your computer is coming from your regular IP address. The only thing it does is slightly masking your location, using one of very few locations around the world. You can safely assume Roskomnadzor have already blocked all of the endpoints or is actively listening in, especially since Opera is owned by a Chinese company.

For the sake of nitpickery alone; VPN isn't really about hiding your location, but about having a "secure line" to another physically remote network. The location hiding is just a handy side effect of the protocol, which in turn has been massively marketed as the only use for it. When you use VPN when you work from e.g. a home office, you actually *don't* want your location hidden (i.e. directing all your internet traffic via the VPN tunnel) since a.o. Microsoft 365 services tends to fall over and die when you do.

When Roskomnadzor actively shuts down all commercial VPN services and/or blocks their known egress points, you have very few options left. One of them is to set up a limited, undeground VPN service so Russians and Belarusians can use *your* internet connection. It's not hard to do, but you'll be swamped in no time when you become the internet pipe for half of Moscow and the whole of Minsk.