Hi everyone,

I’m currently facing some frustrating restrictions with the public Wi-Fi at my school. It’s an open Wi-Fi network without a password, but the school has implemented a firewall (Fortinet) that blocks access to certain websites and services, including VPNs like Mullvad and ProtonVPN. This makes it difficult for me to maintain my privacy online, especially since I don’t want the school to monitor me excessively.

After uninstalling Mullvad, I tried to download it again, but I found that even a search engine (Startpage) is blocked, which is incredibly frustrating! Here’s what happened:

  • The Wi-Fi stopped working when I had the VPN enabled.
  • I disabled the VPN, but still couldn’t connect.
  • I forgot the Wi-Fi network and reset the driver, but still no luck.
  • I uninstalled the Mullvad, and then the Wi-Fi worked again.
  • I tried to access Startpage to search for an up-to-date package for Mullvad, but it was blocked.
  • I used my phone to get the software file and sent it over, but couldn’t connect.
  • I searched for different VPNs using DuckDuckGo, but the whole site was blocked.
  • I tried searching for Mullvad, but that was blocked too.
  • I attempted to use Tor with various bridges, but couldn’t connect for some unknown reason.
  • I finally settled for Onionfruit Connect, but it doesn’t have a kill switch, which makes me uneasy.

Ironically, websites that could be considered harmful, like adult content, gambling sites and online gaming sites, are still accessible, while privacy-tools are blocked.

I’m looking for advice on how to bypass these firewall restrictions while ensuring my online safety and privacy. Any suggestions or alternative methods would be greatly appreciated! (If any advice is something about Linux, it could be a Problem, since my school enforces Windows 11 only PC’s which is really really igngamblingThanks in advance for your help

edit: did some formatting

edit2: It is my device, which I own and bought with my own money. I also have gotten in trouble for connecting to tor and searching for tor, but I stated that I only used it to protect my privacy. Honestly I will do everything to protect my privacy so I don’t care if I will get in trouble.

edit 3: Thanks for the suggestions, if I haven’t responded yet, that’s because I don’t know what will happen.

  • eco_game
    25·
    17 days ago

    What worked for me at my old school was using a ShadowSocks proxy. Basically what this does, is it takes all your traffic and just makes it look like random https traffic (AFAIK). ShadowSocks is just a proxy. The description fits the Cloak module, mentioned below.

    I believe multiple VPNs support this, for me with PIA VPN it’s in the settings under the name “Multi-Hop” (PIA only supports this on the Desktop App, not on mobile).

    This technique is pretty much impossible to block, unless you ban every single VPN ShadowSocks Proxy IP. If that is the case for you (chances are practically 0), you could also selfhost ShadowSocks in combination with the Cloak module, however this method is a lot more complicated.

    • hperrin@lemmy.world
      2·
      17 days ago

      Shadowsocks doesn’t look anything like HTTPS traffic. It looks like a bare stream cipher over TCP connections to one host with bursts of traffic. HTTPS starts off with a TLS handshake (a client hello, a server hello, the server certificate, then a cipher negotiation and key exchange) before any ciphertext is exchanged. Shadowsocks just starts blasting a ciphertext stream. Even if you run it on port 443, it looks nothing like HTTPS.

      Without any sort of cipher negotiation and key exchange, it’s obvious that it’s a stream cipher with a pre shared key, so this would be automatically suspicious. There’s also not really any plausible deniability here. If they probe your Shadowsocks host and see it running there, that’s all the proof they need that you’re breaking their rules. With a VPN, you could at least say it’s for a project, and with SSH, you could say you’re just transferring files to your own machine.

      • eco_game
        1·
        17 days ago

        Yep my mistake, I confused ShadowSocks with Cloak.