Hey folks this is a long shot, but won’t know if I don’t ask.
Due to an unfortunate law, commercial VPN services have to allow govt backdoors in India, so most trusted VPN services no longer host servers in the country. My family goes back and forth often so we have to manage a few things with respect to property and just other life stuff, but a lot of times we’re finding issues popping up when doing financial transactions, retail transactions, or govt transactions. I don’t know enough to tell you why, but webpages don’t load, buttons don’t work, and everything is a fucking headache that we somehow do not experience when inside the country.
Every time my parents have business to handle my dad throws in the towel in frustration after about an hour of trying to make things work. Again, I have no clue why and would be overjoyed to find out the reason.
Regardless I figured a VPN would make certain transactions simpler. So I see a couple options.
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If anyone here self hosts a private VPN server in India, I’d be happy to jump on with you just to get access once a month or so. Would gladly compensate you for the effort.
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Otherwise I load up a raspberry pi and host my own VPN server at someone’s place in the country. I would probably have to get through CGNAT and I’m not sure what the minimum powered device would work. Would a pi pico be sufficient?
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Use a cloud service to host my own VPN
Have any of you experienced this frustration? What do you think the issue might be?
Thanks
I would go option 2 with a pi3/thinclient (cheaper) and just host tailscale on it and configure it as exit node so you can share this device with your family and it can go trough a CGNAT without portforwarding
Even if you ask someone to set it up for you, they’ll have to keep the software updated and maintain the server, basically.
Your best bet is to hire an India-hosted VPS (just Google this, there’s loads of India hosted VPS options) and use that as your VPN server or better yet, opt for a VPN which has servers in India (many still do).
What I have done is get Oracle free tier in Hyderabad and add it as a Tailscale exit node, or ssh to to the VM exposing socks. Note that it is abysmally slow and oracle might (will?) delete the VM after some idle time.
Have any of you experienced this frustration? What do you think the issue might be?
Yes, all the time!
This might not help you but when I travel outside India, I use the teleport feature on my dream machine. I also have a RPi that hosts a tailscale exit node and everything works great except HDFC bank. For some reason I always have issues with their site. But this only works for me because I live in India and only spend maybe a few months at most abroad.
My friends also suggested Surfshark but I always found them sketchy. (The VPN, not my friends). This might work in a pinch if you only use it for business related stuff.
I had the same problem. I ended up getting a free AWS/Oracle server based out of India, and setting up OpenVPN. Works like a charm.
A Raspberry pi with something like wireguard/tailscale should work perfect in this case, I would think. Just use the device as an exit node as needed.
Faced the exact same problem for the exact same reason. My solution was to set up a VPS running Windows 10 on one of the Indian servers of Microsoft Azure, bare minimum specs that will run Windows. In 2022 the lowest tier was $5/month. Once that server is up, you can use Remote Desktop to log in, and use it like a regular PC that is in India.
I understand there are a lot of security issues with doing this, and that this is not the ideal solution. However, this was a temporary solution in a time crunch, and it worked beautifully. Longer term solutions would likely involve hosting a small server at a friend’s house in India, running Wireguard that you can remote into and redirect all traffic through.
Edit: Wrote this before reading through all the comments. A lot of other people have suggested similar solutions. Interesting that HDFC Bank is a problem, we have not run into that issue. Another potential issue is with delivery of OTPs for login, but that is solved using an “International Travel” pack on an Indian phone connection.
I was trying to setup openvpn, not sure I am unable to connect for some reason. Have you got any success ?
How do I sign up with the AWS India server from the US? I want to make sure I get an India IP address
How frequently do you need it ?
My in laws were visiting and even with my paid ProtonVPN few stuff just outright blocked traffic from VPN providers.
What I ended up doing is setting a small VM on aws with squid proxy and it worked. Some site block access from aws ip but it was rare and when it did happen, just terminating and starting the machine gave me a new IP and that did it.
If not, and you can spare some money, send them back home with a configured router that can be a VPN server with default routing enabled, setup ddns and call it a da…
Bro is this an ad dafuq lol
I am in a similar situation, and going to take a newer gen Apple TV and use that as exit node with Tailscale.
Hey bro
Can you list some VPNs which still have physical servers in India?
Oh sick okay I’m gonna try this out asap
Bro, the fkn bank logins! It’s by far the biggest frustration we have.
It just feels purposeful at this point, and that’s confusing given that the affected demographic brings so much cash home.
Anyway, okay, guess I’ll have to get a pi tailscale exit node configured and sent over. Thanks for the validation
Can you help me with this
I tried getting the free tier oracle VPS putting in India as the home country, but it’s asking for a credit card with a desi address and unfortunately I only have debit. Man what a pain in the ass this is
