Last week, the Brazilian government banned millions of users of X, the former Twitter account owned by Elon Musk. It's one of the more high-profile examples of bans placed on forums, and disputes around the world involve many factors: freedom of speech (at least in the US), political dissent, copyright, and illegal activity.
While alternative social media platforms such as Bluesky have seen a surge of new users from Brazil since the ban, some have still turned to virtual private networks (VPNs) to use X – even though doing so is prohibited by the Brazilian government and violations can come with heavy daily fines.
Other sophisticated tools for hiding your location include Tor Browser.
Not all VPNs are created equal. Decrypt by Unredacted Inc. He spoke to the executive director, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that helps people escape censorship and maintain their privacy.
What is VPN?
IP addresses—numbers assigned to each network on the Internet are like a digital fingerprint. They display a large amount of information, including your physical location, the Internet service provider you use, and so on. They are typically a way to have access “geofenced” or restricted to certain regions or jurisdictions.
VPNs obfuscate this information and hide connections to prevent spoofing by third parties.
“For example, if you're in Brazil and X is blocked, you can use a VPN to tunnel packets to X in another country through a VPN tunnel,” says Unredacted Inc. CEO Zach told Decrypt. (He asked that his last name not be used.) “Your ISP or the government can't examine what's in that intercepted traffic without getting the encryption keys from your VPN provider or device.
The problem, says Zack, is that most VPNs don't even try to hide that they're VPNs.
“Common VPN protocols like OpenVPN or WireGuard can easily be fingerprinted by shared port numbers or DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) by the government or ISP,” Zack said. “Using standard VPN protocols is no secret to your ISP and the government, and in some cases can put the user at risk.”
As Zack explains, it's common for government agencies to pressure VPN providers to share user data in order to investigate criminals and terrorist groups trying to hide their activities using VPNs.
“People can use VPNs for malicious purposes, just like any other device,” Zack said. “Governments often issue subpoenas to determine the exact origin of VPN traffic and obtain a specific timestamp of when the breach occurred.”
Instead of using a “raw VPN”, unscrupulous people point to “hidden protocols”.
Zack says that transporters like Shadowsocks — the protocols used by Outline VPN — and Tor like Webtunnel, Snowflake, Wah, and obfs4 are harder to fingerprint than traditional VPNs, making them reliable alternatives.
VPNs are not a silver bullet
Zack warns, however, that if all traffic shares observable patterns, it can be fingerprinted. Advanced government censorship operations often attempt to block VPN protocols, but doing so can cause collateral damage, such as defacing legitimate websites and social media platforms.
“These requests are generally made with good intentions,” he admitted. “The concern is that it is a broad request for more information than is actually necessary.”
The less information collected by a VPN provider, the better. When choosing a VPN, Zack recommends looking for verifiable logging claims and reviewing the provider's security policy and privacy stance. Make sure they're open source and third-party audited, he said.
“Many VPN service providers use affiliate marketing and social media to promote their services, but it's important to scrutinize their claims and find out how they've handled past data requests,” he said. “Technically, any provider can turn on logging at any time without your knowledge.”
Personal options
Popular VPNs include NordVPN, ProtonVPN, SurfShark, and ExpressVPN. There are also decentralized VPN (DPN) options from companies like Mysterium Network, Orchid, Deeper Network, and Tachyon.
Beyond these basics?
“There are a lot of great options out there – for less technical people, Tor Browser and Tor Orbot (which works like a traditional VPN) are very easy to use and understand,” says Zack. “Outline VPN is another intuitive option with easy-to-use cross-platform apps.
“Our service, FreeSox, helps people in heavily censored countries connect to the Outline servers we operate,” he added.
As Zack explained, both Tor and Outline help bypass censorship in many countries around the world.
“It's important to point out that using Tor Browser or Orbot is one of the safest ways to avoid censorship and protect user privacy because it puts your connection through three random nodes when using the regular Internet,” he said. . “This makes communication attacks very difficult.”
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