The $250 VPN that got my blog back after state censorship

Last month my ISP started blocking my travel blog because I covered a protest in my city. I paid $250 for a year of a solid VPN service and it worked within 10 minutes, my site loaded fine again. But my friend in another town tried the same fix and his connection still got throttled to nothing, so results really depend on where you live. I also had to switch my domain provider since they froze my account over a flagged post, that cost another $60. Has anyone else found that paying for privacy tools only helps in certain regions, or did you get a different outcome with cheaper setups?

2 comments

2 Comments

beth_hart6829d ago

I've been using a $5 a month one for like three years now and honestly, the only time I noticed a difference was when I tried to watch a geo-blocked soccer match, that was it. Your setup sounds way more complicated than mine, I just changed my DNS settings and that solved most of my slow loading issues here in the Netherlands. Maybe you're dealing with a way more aggressive situation than I've seen, but I'd test a free trial of something before dropping $250, just saying. Also that domain freeze thing sounds like a whole separate problem, maybe that's really what hurt you more than the actual blocking.

piper_dixon4529d ago

Have you actually tried to publish anything that got flagged, or are you just guessing from a cozy spot in the Netherlands where things work smooth? @beth_hart68, your $5 VPN and DNS tweak sound cute, but you're comparing a geo-blocked soccer match to a state-level censorship campaign, those are totally different beasts. When your ISP is actively throttling your connection and your domain host freezes your account, a free trial or a cheap plan won't cut it, you need the big guns. I'd rather drop $250 once than lose my whole blog and my income for a month, that's basic math. And sure, results vary by region, but that doesn't mean the expensive option is a scam, it means some places are just harder to fight than others. You got lucky with light blocking, but pretending everyone else can do the same with a DNS change is like telling someone in a flood to just use a bigger umbrella.