Free VPN which works on FreeBSD

blackbird9 said:

I'm actually wondering what people use in countries like Iran to watch bbc news. You would have to be pretty damn sure it's safe. Although I think I've read they use black market starlink, I expect that bypasses the local great wall completely.
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Why would anyone in Iran want to know what the BBC reports about Iran?

If anyone in the west wants to know what is going on in Iran, they only need to check

Free Live TV, Online Radio & Webcams Worldwide | Famelack

Watch free live TV, listen to online radio, and explore live webcams from around the world on Famelack. No account, no signup, no ads.
famelack.com famelack.com
 
balanga said:
Why would anyone in Iran want to know what the BBC reports about Iran?

If anyone in the west wants to know what is going on in Iran, they only need to check

Free Live TV, Online Radio & Webcams Worldwide | Famelack

Watch free live TV, listen to online radio, and explore live webcams from around the world on Famelack. No account, no signup, no ads.
famelack.com famelack.com
Click to expand...
The BBC is also one of the least reliable sources of information about the Middle East being thoroughly owned by Israel.
 
MrBSD said:
You are wrong again. You user agent can expose your operating system type.
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So if I, using my Webbrowser on FreeBSD, instruct "my" AI chatbot to analyze 1000 different news outlet's latest articles for some content, it'll spam 1000 requests (and thousands more to proccess the assets and ajax content) using my Webbrowsers' User Agent? That could fix the 0.02% FreeBSD user agent share in little time, since those bots can be scripted to work.
That isn't what they do though, and instead they use their own User Agents when acquiring content.

MrBSD said:
And even if what you said is 100% true, you should not use/visit websites that blacklist VPN/VPS. Simple as that.
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Such as FreeBSD's phabricator, or our bugtracker.

MrBSD said:
If your user agent reports Windows 10/11 you are in the 90% of the users on the net.
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Which millenia was that? 90% of the users use smartphones.
 
cracauer@ said:
BBN News is geooblocked? Why?
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The Iranian regime blocked all internet access to the country, during the mass protests against the regime earlier this year. People inside Iran were using vpn's and smuggled starlink terminals to try to communicate with the outside world. I don't have any personal links to Iran, but this has been widely reported in the media, for example see:-

AFAIK, the blackout is still in place now. The penalties, if you are caught, are severe; up to and including the death penalty, for using a starlink terminal.
www.iranintl.com

New Iran law to up Starlink punishments, use for spying will carry death

The newly published text of a draft Iranian anti-espionage law increases punishments for the use of Elon Musk's Starlink internet technology, including the death penalty if used for spying.
www.iranintl.com www.iranintl.com
 
balanga said:
If anyone in the west wants to know what is going on in Iran, they only need to check

Free Live TV, Online Radio & Webcams Worldwide | Famelack

Watch free live TV, listen to online radio, and explore live webcams from around the world on Famelack. No account, no signup, no ads.
famelack.com famelack.com
Click to expand...
... which, he forgot to mention, is the Iranian state broadcaster's English language service.

en.wikipedia.org

Press TV - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
"Press TV (stylised as PRESSTV) is an Iranian state-owned news media organisation, owned by Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), that broadcasts in the English and French languages."
 
blackbird9 said:
... which is the Iranian state broadcaster's English language service.

en.wikipedia.org

Press TV - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
"Press TV (stylised as PRESSTV) is an Iranian state-owned news media organisation, owned by Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), that broadcasts in the English and French languages."
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It's an Iranian version of the BBC which provides Iranian propaganda the same way that the BBC provides western propaganda. At least if you watch both you should be able to determine the truth as somewhere in between.

Having said that the BBC has been at it for a very long time so can be far more convincing,
 
blackbird9 said:
Actually much of the BBC's coverage has been highly critical of israel, and of the US.
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Really? You know better than the BBC staff?

institute.aljazeera.net

The BBC Says It’s “Impartial.” But Its Own Staff Say Otherwise

BBC journalists and media professionals accuse the BBC’s leadership — and board member Robbie Gibb in particular — of blocking truthful reporting on Israel/Palestine through censorship, political bias, and a culture of fear that betrays the BBC’s duty to report “without fear or favour.”
institute.aljazeera.net institute.aljazeera.net

About free VPN: proton offers WireGuard and it works with FreeBSD, I tested it.
But I do not know how private it is, but in any case usable.
 
hrudor: it seems some of the other BBC staff, think the coverage is too pro the Iranian regime.
www.iranintl.com

BBC's Deal With Iran Over Election Coverage Angers Staffers

A reported deal between the BBC and authorities in Tehran over the coverage of Iran's controversial elections has outraged its Persian service staffers, Iran International has learned.
www.iranintl.com www.iranintl.com
"Staff members of the Persian service believe "by accepting this conditionality, the BBC has allowed the Iranian government to dictate the terms of BBC's reporting."
They have warned that BBC's decision "isolates" them, "divides the BBC, and signals to the Iranian government that BBC Persian is fair game for harassment and persecution," particularly of their families in Iran."

Let alone what some actual Iranians say themselves.
www.gbnews.com

Furious Iranians slam 'biased' BBC as British left support Islamist regime amid uprising

Furious Iranians have slammed the "biased" BBC for its coverage while protests grip the nation, an Iranian journalist told GB News.Mani Barsharzad told the People's Channel: "There is a bias there because it doesn't fit the narrative. The narrative, which they want to say is 'it is their own...
www.gbnews.com www.gbnews.com

Anyway, we need to stick to technical work here.
 
xibo said:
So if I, using my Webbrowser on FreeBSD, instruct "my" AI chatbot to analyze 1000 different news outlet's latest articles for some content, it'll spam 1000 requests (and thousands more to proccess the assets and ajax content) using my Webbrowsers' User Agent? That could fix the 0.02% FreeBSD user agent share in little time, since those bots can be scripted to work.
That isn't what they do though, and instead they use their own User Agents when acquiring content.


Such as FreeBSD's phabricator, or our bugtracker.


Which millenia was that? 90% of the users use smartphones.
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You are the part of the problem.
 
blackbird9 said:
It seems firefox now has a 'free' VPN built into it too. Again, I have no idea how good it is, I've never used it. As has been said, you always need to ask who is funding the service, and why.
blog.mozilla.org

A free VPN you can trust, now built into Firefox | The Mozilla Blog

Update on July 28, 2026: Firefox’s free built-in VPN is starting to roll out for Firefox Android users today. It brings the practical privacy protection
blog.mozilla.org blog.mozilla.org
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IIIRC, there is a paid tier for the VPN.
 
blackbird9 said:
It seems firefox now has a 'free' VPN built into it too. Again, I have no idea how good it is, I've never used it. As has been said, you always need to ask who is funding the service, and why.
blog.mozilla.org

A free VPN you can trust, now built into Firefox | The Mozilla Blog

Update on July 28, 2026: Firefox’s free built-in VPN is starting to roll out for Firefox Android users today. It brings the practical privacy protection
blog.mozilla.org blog.mozilla.org
Click to expand...
I used it, it is "a feature study" which along with some other permissions that allow access to your install, need to be agreed to before the vpn is activated. This is what it takes for me to move to another browser.

Fortunately Protonvpn now works on Firefox, will test the forks.
 
One other solution - that I have been using having just got back from spending several weeks on the French Riviera - is to run a personal (free and open source for Linux - with an additional GUI for Windows) tailscale daemon (set as an "exit node") on a Raspberry Pi (2B so not a particularly powerful one) that I had (sadly it is running GNU/Linux not FreeBSD and I am running Devuan so had to jump through an extra hoop to get it running {see this GH Issue}). The advantage of this is that I could redirect all my Internet traffic securely back to my home address (even whilst using open WiFi in hotels whilst on way to and from holiday destination) and as far as any BBC geo-fencing was concerned I was viewing their site from that normal home address. This is something to beware of when using a paid-for or free VPN - the exit IP addresses of those are sometimes recognizable as being those of a VPN provider and they can then get blocked by the site you are trying to access.

As it happens that Raspberry Pi was being used for another low-intensity purpose whilst I was away so there was no reasons not to use it for this...

You will also need it on your device that you are taking with you - but it is available as a port/package https://www.freshports.org/security/tailscale/ - according to this blog post it is very simple to do on FreeBSD - but I haven't yet done it myself: https://sethops1.net/post/setup-tailscale-on-freebsd/
 
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