Amnezia outwits Russian censorship

The Amnezia VPN system allows any user to become a VPN host. This means that the system cannot be stopped by Russian internet blockades.

Internet censorship in Russia is increasingly taking on Chinese forms

If, as an interior dictator, you want to sell a bloody invasion of a neighboring country as a successful special military operation, it is of course useful to ensure that your citizens do not learn about the real situation in Ukraine. Hence the popularity of all kinds of internet blocks with the Russian authorities.

Although Russian censorship is not as extreme as that in China, internet freedom is also increasingly restricted in Russia. It is probably only a matter of time before the entire Russian Internet is cut off according to the Chinese model. For that reason, human rights activists are looking for ways to gain access to banned websites, such as Amnezia.

Almost all VPNs blocked

The Russian regime has already blocked more than 10,000 websites that provide information about the war in Ukraine in a way that the Kremlin does not like. This list includes popular western social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and independent media.

No wonder more and more Russians are turning to VPN. But the Russian authorities are not standing still either. They block commercial VPN providers using their IP addresses. At the moment, more than half of all VPN providers, such as Nord VPN, are already blocked. It’s only a matter of time before the others take their turn. That is why the only solution is to use a VPN that does not have fixed IP addresses. You can, if you work with thousands of internet users. The free VPN hosting service Amnezia is based on this principle.

How does Amnezia work?

Amnezia was developed during a hackathlon by a Russian opposition group. Amnezia works by setting up its own web host as a VPN server. For that you have to rent your own web server. This is not very expensive nowadays. For example, providers such as DigitalOcean and Amazon offer web hosting for USD 5 per month. Do you have such a web server? Then you can have Amnezia set it up as a VPN and then connect to it.

You are all set. You can now browse undisturbed. If you want to escape totalitarian dictatorships, such as those in Russia, China, Turkmenistan or Iran, an American web host is a great choice. But the US is subject to its own dictatorship, that of very aggressive companies that would like to litigate all illegal downloaders to the grave.

It is illegal to download copyrighted material and break the law, of course you shouldn’t want that. The following information is therefore only there as a thought experiment.

Paying via anonymous crypto and using the Seychelles-based web host Cinfu.com reduces the chance of being caught for illegal downloaders. It also has a data center in the USA, Bulgaria, France, Germany and the Netherlands, among others.

A legal reason to choose Cinfu and payment with crypto is if you prefer not to have a government easily check your movements on the internet. Whichever host you choose in combination with Amnezia, the latter is of course always a nice thought. You can find further instructions here.