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  42                 So Your Country Is Censoring The Internet. What Now?
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  44               <h3 class="datestamp">24/07/2025</h3>
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  48                 <p>The UK's online safety act sucks. Let's get around it.</p>
  49                 <p>
  50                   If you use one of many popular social networking sights and
  51                   are a resident of the hellhole commonly referred to as "The
  52                   United Kingdom," you have likely recently been asked to submit
  53                   your ID for age verification. If you haven't yet, it's coming
  54                   soon to whatever sites you use - Bluesky, as of this morning,
  55                   are asking every UK user to get an ID check in order to use
  56                   DMs or see 'adult' posts. Instagram and Facebook are about to
  57                   roll it out too. Twitter probably won't but only because it's
  58                   the nazi site. You should not be using twitter unless you're a
  59                   nazi.
  60                 </p>
  61                 <p>
  62                   If you're like me, you probably think this is Quite Bad. And
  63                   it is Quite Bad! The cause of this is the 'Online Safety Act,'
  64                   a well-intentioned but ultimately disastrous effort by the UK
  65                   government to Protect The Children by preventing easy access
  66                   to 'adult content.' Unfortunately as ever this means a lot of
  67                   not adult stuff, particularly queer media and LGBT people's
  68                   accounts, get caught in the dragnet. Considering the UK's
  69                   current approach to queerness (they hate it, especially
  70                   transgressive genderfucks like me) this may worry you. It
  71                   should.
  72                 </p>
  73                 <p>
  74                   So, maybe you want to avoid uploading your ID to a third party
  75                   who can use that data how they then wish. (They all promise to
  76                   delete your ID. I do not trust them to do this.) Great news!
  77                   Much like all UK internet legislation, it is quite trivial to
  78                   avoid this. Admittedly, it is not as easy as avoiding IP
  79                   blocks on pirate websites, which was as simple as changing the
  80                   DNS settings on your connection. but it's not actually that
  81                   far off.
  82                 </p>
  83                 <p>
  84                   You have probably heard of VPNs by now. Every other youtuber
  85                   is advertising them. Unfortunately, they are advertising the
  86                   dogshit ones that you simply should not use if you care about
  87                   privacy. Surfshark, specifically, will not hesitate to hand
  88                   your data over to authorities. It should ONLY be used for
  89                   watching other country's netflix catalogues.
  90                 </p>
  91                 <p>But I digress.</p>
  92                 <p>
  93                   As part of my own research to get around this, I had a scan
  94                   over the current crop of paid VPN services currently
  95                   available. After some evaluation, my recommendation is
  96                   <a href="https://protonvpn.com/"><b>ProtonVPN.</b></a> Proton
  97                   is a swiss company that specialises in privacy-focused
  98                   internet applications. They started with ProtonMail (which I
  99                   also use), but ProtonVPN is their next-most mature offering.
 100                 </p>
 101                 <p>
 102                   Proton offers exit points in basically every country in the
 103                   world, with quite a lot of servers in each. Speeds are solid
 104                   (I have basically not noticed a drop) and ping seems
 105                   serviceable for those of you who play a lot of twitch
 106                   shooters. The free offering lets you connect to 5 random
 107                   countries for one device, which isn't a whole lot of good - if
 108                   the countries you draw don't include say, Iceland, Switzerland
 109                   or the Netherlands, you're not gonna live a truly uncensored
 110                   life. The free tier is also what every other prole is using,
 111                   so speeds are going to be generally worse than on the paid pro
 112                   version. The pro version is <b>£8 a month</b> which is IMO
 113                   quite reasonable.
 114                 </p>
 115                 <p>
 116                   Like many other offerrings, Proton provides its own app on all
 117                   platforms that allows you to choose the country to connect
 118                   via, but it also supports router-level configuration via
 119                   OpenVPN and Wireguard, the two most common VPN protocols.
 120                 </p>
 121                 <p>
 122                   "What are these things?" ok yes I just said scary words. You
 123                   probably don't need to worry about it - the pro tier supports
 124                   10 independent devices, so you can install the VPN on every
 125                   geneal purpose computing device you have without worrying
 126                   about the router level stuff.
 127                 </p>
 128                 <p>
 129                   But I'm a nerd, and the purpose of this particular post is to
 130                   inform people about these things! So let's get into those
 131                   scary words. OpenVPN and Wireguard are open-source VPN
 132                   protocols, they are used to standardise how you connect to a
 133                   VPN on any device. All the apps that VPN services provide are
 134                   based on one of these two protocols. Most modern routers
 135                   <i>that are not provided by your ISP</i> support one or both
 136                   of them!
 137                 </p>
 138                 <p>
 139                   So yes, if you want router-level protection you will probably
 140                   need to buy a new router, and realistically that's gonna be
 141                   another <b>£50 - £100.</b> Which I grant is a significant
 142                   outlay! Hence why I don't think any random person is going to
 143                   want to do this unless they're a nerd like me. I already
 144                   maintain a lot of my own network infrastructure, so yes, I'm
 145                   the freak here lol.
 146                 </p>
 147                 <p>
 148                   But! If you do go down that route, it's worthwhile, because
 149                   you can
 150                   <a
 151                     href="https://protonvpn.com/support/installing-protonvpn-on-a-router/"
 152                     >set up your network to route <i>all</i> traffic via your
 153                     VPN,</a
 154                   >
 155                   ensuring every device you use in your home is private. It's
 156                   what I'm doing! But like I said I'm a freak so don't
 157                   necessarily follow my lead on this one.
 158                 </p>
 159                 <p>
 160                   ANYWAY. Point is it's actually kinda trivial to get this nerd
 161                   shit set up nowadays! The apps services provide are simple and
 162                   easy, and they're also pretty cheap! I suggest getting one
 163                   now, before the continued censorship of the internet gets
 164                   worse! OK thanks I'm out, see ya later for a more interesting
 165                   post probably.
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