The Turkish government recently ban the Instagram and Roblox. Currently some government officials are saying that TikTok is a national security concern and should be banned. Right now I am using a VPN like many other people in Turkey but my concern is governments ban to VPN services. Right now some VPN service providers that has strong no logging policies is not usable. I am saying is not usable because they are not legally banned but when you try to open their websites you just can’t. My question is can government ban VPN completely and monitor the people that try to use VPN ? And if its yes is there a way to avoid it ?
One easy and reasonably cheap alternative that would be very difficult to ban is to rent a VPS outside of the country and use it as a proxy via a SSH tunnel. I did that successfully during a long lay over in a Chinese airport.
Since SSH is widely used for many reasons, can use any port, and encrypts the data, it is quite difficult to block.
Ultimately, and I suspect we are heading in that direction, if governments truly want to decide what you can have access to, the solution is to block everything and then whitelist what they allow you to access rather than trying to block what they don’t want you to access.
In China (where I am now) VPNs are illegal, and the government try / tried to block them, but it backfires. So, now you can use quite a number of solutions, and most Chinese with just more than basic knowledge has access to a VPN. This is sent from a Chinese network, via a well-known VPN.
In oppressive countries like China, from what I see and hear on the internet, people steer more towards renting a VPS and putting their own VPN (or proxy) on it, using stealth protocols such as V2ray or X-ray. I haven’t used it myself yet, just mentioning them in case anybody wants to do their own research, because it’s a bit of an involved process.
I will address OP in Turkish now, as they’re Turkish.
Çin ve İran gibi ülkelerde VPN’leri de teker teker yasaklıyorlar, buldukça. Bu yüzden özellikle Çinliler, anladığım kadarıyla Avrupa’dan ucuz, 3-5 Euro’luk bir VPS kiralıyorlar. Çünkü bilindik VPN’ler genellikle engelli. X-ray core, V2ray gibi protokolleri biraz araştırmanızı öneririm, ben de biraz öğrenmeye başlayacağım yakında. İran’da da bunlar kullanılıyor şu anda.
Bizdeki ISP’ler de İran ve Çin’de olduğu gibi deep packet inspection yapıyor, yani sıradan bir VPN’i tespit etmeleri zor değil isterlerse. Baskıcı ortam arttıkça daha çok sitenin yasaklanacağını düşünüyorum, şimdiden önlem almak gerekli bence de.
Çin’de anladığım kadarıyla bu iş bir kedi fare oyununa döndü, hükümet birkaç ay sonra kiraladığın VPS’in IP adresine uyanıp banlayabilir. Sonra yeni bir tane kiralayıp oradan devam ediyorsun örneğin. Yurt dışına çıkışları tamamen kapatıp Kuzey Kore haline getirmedikleri sürece mutlaka şu veya bu yolla yasakları aşmak mümkün olacak.
Sadece bu süreçte Linux kullanmayı, kiraladığınız server’da command line üzerinden bir şeyler yapmayı vs. öğrenip kendinizi alıştırırsanız daha hazırlıklı olursunuz.
Right now I don’t care the ban that much because I can use VPN but I am genuinely scaring right now for the future. And if there is a way to avoid it I want to learn it before its too late.
Yes they can. They can do it with many ways. However there might be some other protocol that can bypass the censorship.
VPNs based on openvpn and wireguard protocol can be easily detected (DPI, deep packet inspect) and blocked. To avoid this situation, people in some areas (like China) would rent a vps and wrap data in TLS to disguise their connection, this makes government hard to detect what websites people are visiting.
Governments can block VPN services and make them difficult to access, as seen with some providers in Turkey. Using VPNs with obfuscation features might help bypass these blocks, but there’s always a risk of monitoring, so caution is needed.
Yes, governments can ban VPNs and monitor their use. However, using stealth VPNs, Tor, or decentralized networks may help you avoid detection.
Most governments can enforce their laws by pointing the barrel of a gun at the right people, throwing them in jail, and confiscating property.
So yes, your government can absolutely do that, especially since Turkey has been eroding democracy over the last couple of decades.
Erdogan is tweaking as shit to ban everyfucking social media platform wtf
So true. I suppose there are 300 million VPN users in China
I am a computer engineering student and to be honest, setting up my own VPN was actually a bit interesting, so I want to set up my own VPN, but I don’t know anything about VPS. I would be very happy if you know or recommend something, and if possible, if there is something educational that is not superficial and explains the algorithms used in it. That would be great.
Cevap için teşekkür ederim. (Thank you for your answer.)
This is the answer right here. “Right now I don’t care the ban that much” If you don’t care that much, then the government will come find you somehow and will change your lifestyle. Care about it so it doesn’t happen to you.
yea, look at v2ray, and protocols like shadowsocks, vless, vmess, trojan etc
No he is not he is the best president of all time. (I couldn’t afford a vpn)
Both can use any port so the protocol is mostly a matter of preference. I can easily imagine governments forcing a “man in the middle” proxy at IPS level on https to monitor all traffic (or at least trying to) in the future, though. I think SSH will stay “off their radar” for longer.
As long as you use an ISP for layers 1 and 2, the government can see your traffic at least up to layer 4. This where it is important not to use a port/protocol that is designed to:
"V2Ray VLess (short for “V2Ray Virtual Less Protocol”) is a custom protocol developed by the V2Ray project for use with the V2Ray network protocol. It is designed to provide enhanced security and anonymity for internet traffic transmitted through a V2Ray connection.
VLess is based on the MessagePack serialization format, and uses a combination of encryption and obfuscation to conceal the identity and content of the traffic being transmitted. It is designed to be efficient and fast, and is able to adapt to different network environments and censorship situations."
No wonder that guy was flagged by the system…
On the other hand, SSH is used by many people for many reasons that are not forbidden by the Chinese government. It is still mostly regarded as remote shell and nothing else so the authorities are likely to ignore this, they simply don’t have the man power to check each and every person using SSH. And even if they do, it is quite easy to come up with a believable excuse.
Yes, but they don’t do much. But you can see they can, during big CCP meetings and around the Tiananmen Square anniversary date VPNs get slowed to a crawl, or stop working. So, they know how, they just don’t enforce it on a daily basis
Their IPs are shared with a lot of legit services, banning all of them will cause more harm than good.