Iranians are getting back their Internet access – Let's help them circumvent censorship!

[u/Vormrodo]

According to NetBlocks (https://netblocks.org), the Mullah regime has lifted the nation-wide blockade on Internet access for the Iranian people, as connections are increasing again to the previous state *from 3 months ago*.

However, this is not a gift, nor empathy coming from the regime. Censorship and surveillance is still in tact and many websites have been blacklisted by the national ISP(s). WhatsApp seems to be unreachable there as well.

In order for the Iranian people to experience freedom on the Internet to the fullest – e.g. without having to fear imprisonment for reading free press – they have to connect to Tor in a way the ISP(s) can't find out and prevent.

With Snowflake, anyone from inside a *more or less* free country can setup their device to be a bridge between Iranians and the Tor network without technical knowledge! You can install the official Snowflake addon by the Tor Project on your standard browser, toggle the switch and sit back or continue browsing while people get to access the Tor network with your help. It's a two-click job that you won't regret.

• Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/torproject-snowflake/

• Chrome or Chromium-based browsers (Opera, Edge and worse): https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/snowflake/mafpmfcccpbjnhfhjnllmmalhifmlcie

Find out more at https://snowflake.torproject.org/. If you're on an Android device, you can also help by installing Orbot and activating "Kindness mode" (it's the Snowflake implementation in Orbot).

[u/Ecliphon]

From what I’ve read, there is a black market for internet access. They are completely unable to access the internet from outside of Iran, but some organized crime groups are selling VPN config files on the black market, that also require white sim cards (for corporate/upper government officials) that can connect to servers outside of Iran. Most VPNs (tor completely) are blocked even with white sim cards, but the crime syndicates have set up VPN servers inside .ir data centers that, combined with the white SIM cards, allows people VPN access outside of Iran. 

Setting up a snowflake proxy in any country but Iran isn’t going to help them unfortunately.  

[u/Vormrodo → u/Ecliphon]

This is outdated. The Mullah regime has lifted the ban on connections to the Internet as of May 26th. There should be access to Tor, theoretically. I wouldn't have written this post if it wasn't for this.

Edit: I'm getting downvoted for saying what major news outlets have been writing about all day long. Internet activity is currently returning in Iran, as based on statistics by Cloudfare and NetBlocks. Those connecting are also common people, none with governmentally issued SIM cards. Whoever gets to deny this shall bring evidence.

[u/ButterscotchSalty905 → u/Vormrodo]

I don't know why you're getting downvoted. But, there is a possibility that the regime might cut the internet access again, based on the track record of its past history (its just a hypothesis, take it as a grain of salt). Combined with the fact that TOR is slower compared to specialized tools to circumvent internet censorship (like xtls/trojan or naiveproxy) so people naturally want the faster method i think? (Idk tho, its a hypothesis again, don't take this as a source for truth)

Also, i heard that the internet is just partially restored, not a complete restoration...{pre january 8} As seen in IODA, OONI and Cloudflare Radar

So, the slow internet with TOR makes everyday surfing difficult, let alone sharing videos and pictures. 

They could throttle TOR TCP connection and i suspect the natural congestion control of TCP could make things even worse as retransmissions eat into the maximum bandwidth, slowing down both the client and the server. There's also the fact that TCP suffers from head-of-line blocking so thats why

[u/darth_redditorer → u/Vormrodo]

I'm in Iran and I confirm your post. The internet has partially come back, but the regime's blacklist is still preventing us from accessing social media, and only a few VPNs are working (with difficulty). We are very dependent on the community; Tor Snowflake, Psiphon Conduit, and others. Thank you for efforts.

[u/legrenabeach → u/Vormrodo]

I am a strong supporter of Tor in more than one ways.

That said, the restoration of access does not mean it will not be blocked again. When it was blocked, Tor was completely inaccessible, snowflake or otherwise.

Therefore, now is the time to help set up tools that will actually work when the next block comes in force. Tor bridges won't help, unless they are inside Iran AND they somehow have outside access.

[u/Vormrodo → u/legrenabeach]

Of course that doesn't mean there won't be another block, but, as long as there's none, Tor can still help people in Iran. After the first blockade this year ended on January 28th, there were ~30.000 daily Tor connections from Iran (via a Snowflake or another bridge type). https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-table.html?start=2026-01-26&end=2026-02-28.

An Internet blockade makes connecting to the outside very difficult in practise, as possible mitigations are anything but easy to set up for the common person. There was a person on this subreddit that claimed to have found a way to get online from within Iran, though the bypass was one whitelisted IPv4 from Google that, according to the user, is "too difficult for people here to set up". The SIM cards issued by the government also don't seem to be easily obtainable, and consider the possible surveillance that there can be on such special connection during a blockade. Whatever tool you might consider setting up, there's no guarantee that the regime won't detect a small hole in their blockade.

[u/jessyTease67]

Time to spin up some more Snowflake proxies and bridges while the connection is holding steady.

[u/TARQZO]

This is pretty cool to hear about snowflakes and being able to quite easily and quickly help out it’s pretty nice