[guardian-dev] Orbot as a pure VPN?

Nathan of Guardian nathan at guardianproject.info
Tue Mar 28 07:06:51 EDT 2017


Thanks for testing. Part two of this would be to add new logic to
automatically figure out if a user needs a bridge (which you absolutely
do need in China), and then set it up without any interaction. For
China, that means enabling meek or finding a fresh obfs4 bridge.

It is not surprising that you could never get Tor to work in China. It
is technically possible, but not clear how to do it for most users, even
sophisticated ones. A new study coming out soon ran a simulated censor
state environment, and the vast majority of users figured out how to
setup Tor Browser properly to get around it.

On the other hand, while China is the gold standard of "does my proxy
work" tests, in most parts of the world, plain vanilla tor still works
without bridges. These are places where the surveillance and filtering
is more passive and subtle. Brazil as an example is a place where
blocking of specific apps is happening more often, but Tor works fine
without any advanced configuration.

Enough rambling. More soon. Thanks as always for the great feedback!

On Mon, Mar 27, 2017, at 11:01 PM, Rick Valenzuela wrote:
> Interesting idea, Nathan.
> 
> The UI is nice, and I imagine the 'easy button' nature
> of it would appeal to many. 
> 
> However, it doesn't work here in China. I connected, added Twitter, and
> couldn't retrieve new tweets. It doesn't require root, nor any
> non-default settings, correct? I am on a Nexus 5x running 7.1.2
> (NPG47I).
> 
> That said, I never got Orbot working here without using another VPN
> first.
> 
> Best regards,
> Rick
> 
> -- 
> Rick Valenzuela
> Videojournalist
> Shanghai, China
> _______________________________________________
> List info: https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/listinfo/guardian-dev
> To unsubscribe, email:  guardian-dev-unsubscribe at lists.mayfirst.org


-- 
  Nathan of Guardian
  nathan at guardianproject.info


More information about the guardian-dev mailing list