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“Women, Life, Freedom” became the protest anthem of Iran’s still raging revolution months after the death of 22-year-old Kurdish woman Martha Amini in moral police custody. Amini was arrested last September for wearing a hijab “improperly” and violating the Islamic Republic’s mandatory dress code law. Since then, her name has become a viral her hashtag used by millions of online activists protesting dictatorships around the world.
In response to ongoing protests in Iran (mostly led by women and young people), Iranian authorities are increasingly restricting internet access. First, it temporarily blocked popular app stores and blocked social media apps like WhatsApp and Instagram indefinitely. It then implemented sporadic cell phone shutdowns whenever protests escalated. In perhaps the most extreme example, authorities responded to protests by completely shutting down the internet in southeastern Iran in February, Al-Arabiya reports. Motives include controlling information, keeping protesters offline, and forcing protesters to use state services that can more easily track their online activity, according to digital and human rights experts, sometimes leading to arrests. cause.
With Internet connectivity becoming increasingly difficult not only for protesters but for everyone in Iran, millions of people are relying on virtual private networks (VPNs) to control their internet activity. I learned to hide, circumvent blocks, and access accurate information beyond national propaganda. Simply put, a VPN works by masking a user’s IP address, making it more difficult for governments to monitor your activity and detect your location. It does this by routing the user’s data to her VPN provider’s remote his server, and allows the ISP (or government) to monitor Internet activity on her VPN provider’s server and the individual users actually involved in that activity. make it very difficult to associate
But demand for VPNs has peaked, and authorities have recently begun to move more diligently to block VPN access. It is included. Ars was unable to contact the Iranian parliament to confirm whether new restrictions may be in place. But experts told Ars that censorship is likely to increase. Advisor Ruhollah Momen-Nasab recently called for enforcement of VPN sellers.
However, VPN providers do not give in to this intense pressure. Lucas uses a pseudonym to protect his identity under heavy government scrutiny and he is a spokesperson for Lantern, one of Iran’s oldest and most popular free VPN tools. He has close to 9 million monthly active users in Japan. Lucas tells Ars that Lantern’s traffic increased by 400% after his Amini’s death, causing his server costs to skyrocket. To keep VPN access steady while auto-scaling the service to meet growing user demand, Lantern solicited donations, used up credit cards, and helped other companies offering his VPN service in the area. Worked with the organization to troubleshoot connectivity issues when they arose.
“We are constantly under attack from the Iranian government,” Lucas told Ars. “So we’re always looking at data, listening to users, and trying to come up with entirely new ways to keep everyone online.”
Censorship is evolving day by day
Lantern is part of a small group of organizations protecting Internet access in Iran, helping people like Milad, a 35-year-old Lantern user. Milad requested that Ars not use her full name when discussing her VPN use in secret. Milad, who circumvents internet blocks every day, primarily uses his VPN to “find out unreliable news” and direct friends and family to “threads to follow” to stay above state propaganda. so that we can monitor how authorities are responding to protests. For Milad, getting online requires multiple tools. He needs a complete toolbox of VPNs, anonymous networks, and various proxies for his solution. This is my personal arsenal of evasion tools I’ve been building over the past decade to stay ahead of ever-changing censorship tactics.
“Censorship here evolves every week, if not every day,” Milad told Ars. “I use several tools on a daily basis.”
Iran is second only to Russia as the country most affected by internet shutdowns, according to a report by Top10VPN, an independent review site that monitors VPN use and internet shutdowns. It cost $73 million. This is the money the company lost in his 130 hours of internet throttling, 2,179 hours of internet blackouts, and 4,863 hours of social his media shutdowns. Globally, the cost to the economy in 2022 will be about $24 billion, more than 300% higher than the cost of closing in 2021.
