I need help finding VPNs for my Iranian friend
1 pointby pickeledLobe4 hours ago1 comment
  • Bender4 hours ago
    Iran is only permitting whitelisted sites at the moment and foreseeable future as of January 8th. They are not playing whack-a-mole and not allowing any VPN sites. To reach this site that would suggest they intentionally whitelisted ycombinator.com? HN is on a dedicated non-CDN non-shared IP in California, only used by HN/YC. Are you outside of Iran and your boy is in Iran? How are you communicating with them? The title refers to your friend and the content refers to your boy.

    To answer your question the only method that would not attract that much attention would be multiple chained SSH forwards through an Iranian VPS provider to a non Iranian VPS provider. One could look up articles on how to chain SSH connections and use the final connection as your web proxy (or VPN). It is not very fast and not optimal for playing a game unless it is a text or curses based game. This method will however work fine for reaching external email servers, chat servers and forums that do not block VPS providers. If you have a friend outside of Iran they could be the final SSH forward so you egress from a residential IP.

    • pickeledLobe3 hours ago
      my friend is in Iran and close to an hour ago he was using a vpn to message me through telegram however this vpn is not stable enough to connect calls and to even continue working apparently because he is back to being offline and unable to message me. I think there are vpn services that work for some technical reason I am not educated about and I was hoping some of you could help. Do you happen to know how he even connected using a vpn? he was connected yesterday and we hung out for hours and got comfortable enough to schedule another game for today but things are going bad again.
      • Bender3 hours ago
        Your friend is not likely in Iran. They blocked all sites as of January 8th and are only whitelisting state-approved sites. They have not whitelisted Telegram or any VPN sites. That small handful of people that are using smuggled Starlink terminals are not going to risk their lives to play D&D. Iran has tracked many of them down and "dealt" with them.

        Hopefully they did not ask you for money or better, hopefully this is a 4chan LARP. Have you met this person in real life? We can only hope that Iran's totalitarian regime is ousted and returns to its constitutional monarchy and former greatness.