Psiphon Blog

In December 2017-January 2018, protests erupted throughout Iran, calling for change in the country. Unlike the protests of 2009, known as the Green Revolution, this civil unrest involved many Iranians that previously were unaffiliated with any political opposition movement. In response, the Iranian government enacted blocks on Telegram and Instagram in the country. To gain access to these applications and circumvent censorship, Iranian users flooded to tools like Psiphon. In order to shed light on these protests and the resulting surge in users, Psiphon has collected and analyzed network data from before, during and after the protests. This data has been combined with an understanding of the political, social and economic situation in Iran for a deeper look at how Internet connectivity and freedom impacts Iranian society as a whole. Ultimately, this blocking event has proven the importance of the Internet and access in Iran and highlighted the growing technical abilities and scope of

Psiphon Inc. has for years been leading the charge to open the internet to those living under censoring regimes. Despite facing no content restrictions online, users from Western countries are turning to VPNs such as Psiphon, to protect their personal privacy online. Yet in March 2017, the Pew Research Center released a startling statistic that some 70% of American internet users are not sure what purpose a VPN serves. 1 If the ever-increasing number of Psiphon accounts is any indication of the growing number of VPN users worldwide, a substantial influx of independent users are entering a market in which they have no metric for critically evaluating the products. This group now bears the burden of understanding risks in the unfamiliar domain of cybersecurity. As such, they are therefore highly susceptible to misinformation. One such term that puts users on high alert is the pervasiveness of the term data logging throughout VPN websites and forums, and a misrepresentation of indiv