18 Feb
2012
18 Feb
'12
6:49 a.m.
Hi Kai,
On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 01:05:12PM +0800, Kai Hendry wrote:
Sorry for jumping on this Tor thread a bit late, but I
travelled to
Iran last summer [1] and met with some geeks. They used VPN software
to get around the censorship and not Tor.
Canadian VPN providers were popular IIRC.
What am I missing?
I guess that it's a combination of:
- Tor is quite simple and very well documented, it's also free,
anyone can use it, has broad support in operating systems and
browsers. It's probably easier for the non-technical person to
understand and evaluate than knowing how to use a VPN provider and
then find and pay for one.
As you say the people you met with were geeks, so I'm not
surprised they preferred something other than Tor. A working VPN
would definitely be a lot more pleasant to use than Tor.
- There's probably a worry that Iran may block the well-known VPN
protocols and ports, and even well-known providers, but they can't
really block all of Tor without blocking all of the Internet.
Cheers,
Andy
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