VPN, Tor Use Increases in Iran After Internet 'Curfews'

Iran's government is trying to limit internet access, reports CNBC — while Iranians are trying a variety of technologies to bypass the blocks: Outages first started hitting Iran's telecommunications networks on September 19, according to data from internet monitoring companies Cloudflare and NetBlocks, and have been ongoing for the last two and a half weeks. Internet monitoring groups and digital rights activists say they're seeing "curfew-style" network disruptions every day, with access being throttled from around 4 p.m. local time until well into the night. Tehran blocked access to WhatsApp and Instagram, two of the last remaining uncensored social media services in Iran. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and several other platforms have been banned for years.

As a result, Iranians have flocked to VPNs, services that encrypt and reroute their traffic to a remote server elsewhere in the world to conceal their online activity. This has allowed them to restore connections to restricted websites and apps. On September 22, a day after WhatsApp and Instagram were banned, demand for VPN services skyrocketed 2,164% compared to the 28 days prior, according to figures from Top10VPN, a VPN reviews and research site. By September 26, demand peaked at 3,082% above average, and it has continued to remain high since, at 1,991% above normal levels, Top10VPN said....

Mahsa Alimardani, a researcher at free speech campaign group Article 19, said a contact she's been communicating with in Iran showed his network failing to connect to Google, despite having installed a VPN. "This is new refined deep packet inspection technology that they've developed to make the network extremely unreliable," she said. Such technology allows internet service providers and governments to monitor and block data on a network. Authorities are being much more aggressive in seeking to thwart new VPN connections, she added....

VPNs aren't the only techniques citizens can use to circumvent internet censorship. Volunteers are setting up so-called Snowflake proxy servers, or "proxies," on their browsers to allow Iranians access to Tor — software that routes traffic through a "relay" network around the world to obfuscate their activity.

$7 Billion in cash to Iran government

[backslashdot]

Meanwhile, the Biden administration unfroze $7 billion in funds in exchange for one American prisoner that the Iranians can use to prop up their network of secret police (and grab even more prisoners), the Basij and the IRGC. Reference: https://twitter.com/shahrvando... [twitter.com] So yeah, that's what the US government is doing .. providing "support" to the protesters in the form of tweeting (which does nothing), while providing the regime with actual finances and money they can use to buy weapons.

Oh, and by the way,

Re:$7 Billion in cash to Iran government

[lsllll]

That news is from May 2021. Much has changed since then. As much as I hate to admit it (as an Iranian American), the sanctions put in by Trump and followed by Biden have actually done a lot of damage to the Iranian government. At this point, after waging their proxy wars and supporting the Hezbollah and the Houthis, they have no money. This is one reason why I think Biden is stalling JCOPA, while Iran is giving concessions just to be able to get a deal going to get more money into the country.

The moment the Iranian government runs out of money to keep its internal operations going, such as paying government workers and the police, this whole palace of theocracy may just fall.

Re:$7 Billion in cash to Iran government

[hdyoung]

Unfortunately, they wont run completely out of cash, and the ruling elite will probably just kill several thousand protesters, several more thousand women who dare to show a strand of hair, and clamp down until things get quiet. Much like Russia (and many other places), Iran is unlikely to change due to external pressures. It’s up to the Iranian people. If they want a change, theyre gonna have to make it happen, and it’ll be bloody. It depends on how badly they want a different government.

Thankfully the US seems to be getting out of the business of direct regime change (yes, I’m aware of what the US did with the Shah 70 years ago and I dont like to talk about Iraq 2). But that means that many societies are going to choose to stick with various forms of autocracy.

Back to the topic

[ls671]

OK, back to the topic, if Iranian connections are throttled, using a VPN won't help. VPN and TOR will be throttled as well. As a matter of fact TOR is naturally kind of like throttled wherever you are.

The headline makes no sense.

Re: $7 Billion in cash to Iran government

[WindBourne]

Hopefully, the west will not cave on this. They want O&G and Iran wants $. But as u said, gov is hurting.

Re:

[backslashdot]

Liar. False. What is news from from 2021?

Re:

[lsllll]

So says the AC. That deal has been [steadfastclash.com] on the docket for a long [dailywire.com] time while the U.S. kept denying it. [thebl.news] It keeps coming up [breitbart.com] over and over [iranintl.com]. I stand by what I said. U.S. is not about to give Iran any money. Every single site you'll cite will be a propaganda site.

Re:

[backslashdot]

Somebody please mod down the comment claiming this is old news. How did it get modded up? Jeeze, do some basic checking before modding people up (or down). It's not old news, it's current from this week. Check the links and facts.

Re:

[lsllll]

Here's my post [slashdot.org] with references. Do you have any concrete evidence/news site claiming otherwise?

Re:

[backslashdot]

Your goal is to reduce vigilance and awareness that Iran may soon get, or already got, the $7 billion? You obviously want them to get the $7 billion. Declare that, please. Second, there are currently protestors being banned from Twitter at the behest of the Iranian government. Do you deny that is not current news? I provided a link to Jadi Mirmirani 's account, showing it as suspended. I provided a link to Radio Free Europe to an article stating he was arrested last week. Why do you expect us to believe the

Re:

[backslashdot]

Btw, I literally posted a statement from last week by an official Iran government source .. what more "concrete evidence" is needed?

Re:

[lsllll]

You are literally trolling. Your first link goes to a Twitter feed that's in Farsi (which I can read) and says nothing about the $7 billion deal. In addition, it pictures Mahmmad Javad Zarif [wikipedia.org], who was the foreign minister under the last president and hasn't been in office for over a year, so the picture is old.

Your second link goes to a news feed with no reference to the $7 billion deal. And your third link goes to a suspended Twitter account. Nice trolling.

Re:

[backslashdot]

First, do you have problems with reading comprehension? There are TWO PARTS to my original comment. One was about the $7 billion deal, which I provided a link to .. it is in Iranian, which I don't read, but on Chrome browsers you can click "Translate this tweet," and it provides a translation. But fine, if you want to be a jackass about it, here is a second source: https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]

The second and third link was a reference to my second point, that protesters were being blocked and that is cu

Re:

[youngone]

You guys should send in the CIA to overthrow the Iranian government then because it went so well the first time.

Information wants to be free

[WindBourne]

Go Iranians. Take back your nation.

Re:

[ShanghaiBill]

Go Iranians. Take back your nation.

That won't happen as long as the soldiers and police follow orders.

So far, there is no sign of any defections.

"Taking off your headscarf" is not going to overthrow the government.

Re: Information wants to be free

[WindBourne]

That did not happen in the 70s with the Shah. Nearly all of the troops were loyal. The only reason he fell was carter quit backing and ppl rose up.

Almost no VPN protocol works here in Iran

[Oasis1701]

I've tried it all. Tor, wireguard. wireguard over TCP. openvpn, UDP and TCP, obfuscated or not. shadowsocks, v2ray. and all sorts of stealth modes that vpn providers claim that are meant to bypass censorship. These fuckers bought the most sophisticated software and hardware from china and have tweaked them for maximum efficiency to make sure that the country moves back towards the stone age while the regime and the government milk money and resources from the people to spend for their families living in mansions in Canada/US/UK and other places. Sure if you try hard enough you can finally gain access but how many of the 80m population can understand all of these technicalities to get themselves free access to the free internet. Not to mention, they have also blocked access to the apple's appstore and google's playstore. Despite all of that, People still are trying to find ways to connect by sharing APK files to free, unsafe vpn apps that works sometimes and are hotspotting their vpn connections from android devices to help apple devices gain appstore access to download free vpn apps. By the way, I've tried tor from different locations in Iran connecting from different ISPs and mobile networks. 80% of the time it doesn't work and if it does, your internet speed will be something around 5 to 20 kb/s and it won't hold for too long. If you're from Iran and reading this, Express VPN's lightweigh protocol works great, nordvpn's wireguard implementation works on the MCI network, PIA's TCP protocol works on ADSL connections although all of these might stop working at some point and I do know that you do have to spend your two+ months of salary to purchase these services.

Re:

[guest reader]

Hotspotting vpn connections from android devices to apple or other devices is
not possible without getting root access on android. That is indeed only for tech
savvy people.
Yes, VPN is expensive. VPN providers should offer also 5GB limited monthly plan
for 10% of the usual unlimited cost.

RT

[barcarolle]

I use Tor now to access RT.com.