Valery Fadeev, head of Russia's Human Rights Council, concedes that blocking circumvention tools would devastate businesses and banks

Head of Russia’s Human Rights Council admits banning VPNs is “impossible”

Attempting to block all VPNs would disrupt businesses and banks

The official still condemned citizens using VPNs to access blocked media

  • Krusty@quokk.auEnglish
    1·
    6 hours ago

    You can use SOCKS instead of a VPN. SOCKS proxies allow arbitrary socket connections. You can use them for anything. The biggest difference is a VPN routes all(most) your traffic, whereas SOCKS are typically only used for specific(explicit) connections. Both other strong end-to-end encryption, obfuscating what you’re doing.

    The good thing is the abundance of residential and mobile SOCKS proxies. So you look like a regular person on the Internet and you’re not using commercial IP ranges.

    • northface@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      4 hours ago

      Residential proxies are controversial, as the majority of them are made available via adware inserted into mobile apps, running without the device owner’s knowledge about it:

      Residential proxy networks grow through several mechanisms. The most widespread is SDK-based provisioning: proxy companies pay mobile developers to embed their SDK into free or low-cost applications, which ships with a lengthy end-user licence agreement that, buried in legal language, consents to routing third-party traffic through the user’s device. Most users click through without reading it (Trend Micro, 2025; Google, 2026; FBI, 2026).

      https://www.first.org/blog/20260424-Infrastructure-Nobody-Owns