Using a common VPN on a residential IP caused my entire internet connection to be blocked for a few hours at a time after ~10 minutes, verified over a few weeks with ~3 intermittent attempts. Make of that what you will.

Currently the best VPN-alternative seem to be Project X https://xtls.github.io/en/ It is flexible and well tested in China but configuring it properly is quite difficult.

> Aren’t you afraid of using a VPN and their being ramifications?

Depending on the sophistication of the VPN software being used network traffic can appear to monitors as UDP[0] packets superficially similar to what many video games produce.

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Datagram_Protocol

Basically everyone in the UAE uses VPNs, the government is OK with this.

They do DPI to interfere with VOIP calling over VPNs though, the purpose being to use phone bills as a yet another hidden tax (which the UAE has a plenty of).

Honestly, I don't think the UAE (or any non-democratic regime) is too concerned about people using VPNs. They are more concerns when they are using VPNs to actively destabilse the ruling regime. There is a huge gap here. I would guess that the vast majority of VPN users use it to (1) watch geo-fenced legit content, like Netflix in a different country, or (2) visit banned websites (gambling, crypto, adult content, etc.). Probably very few users are actively engaged in creating and promoting content to destabilse the ruling regime.