subliminalpanda

The always-on VPN on iOS can be flaky at times, especially if you try to use public wifis with captive portals.

WhatApp does the same for UAE numbers. If I initiate a call to my sister who lives in UAE I get an error saying that "Whatsapp calling is unavailable in the UAE" or something along those lines.

We worked around it by installing Signal, but she needs a VPN to be able to access it since it's completely blocked in the UAE (as well as Oman).

We get around this by texting each other before hand on whatsapp with the keyword "vpn" and then talk to each other over Signal. Quite the hassle.

They blocked it? How unfortunate, guess I have to cancel my subscription now :-/

I rolled my own OpenVPN server on digital ocean. I find that having 2 instances running, one over TCP port 443 and one on UDP over an arbitrary port works great in most scenarios.

Fantastic project.

It's most likely a captive portal. Try entering a non-secure site like captive.apple.com and see if it redirects to a wifi portal.

That makes logical sense, thanks.

Are there any privacy concerns if ublock origin extension is used with the Tor browser?

Has there been any research in mitigating these types of attacks? I'm interested in reading about them.

Seems to be working, albeit a bit slow.

From what I understand OpenVPN tunneled through stunnel works, but I haven't tried it myself.

Setting yourself up with your own private bridge might be another way to go.

If you're lucky they'll just wipe the drive and use it for themselves.

Message backup is there on iOS too.

It still does

Well that's unfortunate.

I would love to try rdio, but since I do not live in the US I can't register at all.

If you're up for going the VPS route, there's an awesome project called Streisand on github that automates the entire process that sets up the server with multiple VPN protocols as well as TOR bridges:

https://github.com/jlund/streisand

Good luck!

All the more reason to find an alternative to SMS based authentication.

It is somewhat comforting to know that message history cannot be retrieved from WhatsApp or other E2E apps like Threema.

All Egpyt has to do is to block Singal's servers IPs and effectively take it offline.

This is what Gulf regimes already do (I know for sure it's blocked in UAE and Oman since I have tried).

Signal with a built in tor client that automatically bridges using obfs would be extremely powerful. A lock screen that destroys messages after x number of attempts is a good bonus (similar to threema).

As far as Steam is concerned I used Entropay for virtual pre-paid debit cards. I live in the middle east and it happily validated any US address. Entropay does take a 5% commission if you top-up with a credit/debit card however.

Thanks!

Any specifics of what type of VPN protocol its using?

daily mail version of the story: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3549402/Fresh-eviden...

The problem with Telegram is that it doesn't default to E2E; using it means to go through that additional step of starting a secret chat which I venture a lot of people won't do unless they're very conscious of it.

I still have no clue what practical uses there are to something like Etherium. Can anyone give an example?

I believe so: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure-Server

Still not seeing it myself. I wonder if this is being rolled out in chunks.

Nice! Thank you

My question is, how can this be verified?

Thanks!