Skip to content
WorkingVPN Help

Using WorkingVPN in a country that restricts VPNs

A small number of countries filter or block VPN traffic at the national level. In those places WorkingVPN may be slower, less reliable, or unavailable, and in some jurisdictions using a VPN at all may be against the law.

Where this applies

WorkingVPN treats the following as high-censorship regions, and adjusts what it recommends to you accordingly: China, Iran, Russia, Turkmenistan, Belarus, and Myanmar. North Korea is a separate case, with essentially no public internet access at all.

Conditions in other countries vary and can tighten quickly, so treat this as the list we act on rather than an exhaustive one.

We do not run servers inside any of these countries. That is deliberate. We do not want infrastructure sitting in jurisdictions where it could be seized or where we could be compelled to log the people using it.

Use the desktop or mobile app, not the browser extension

This is the opposite of what people usually expect, so it is worth being clear about.

The browser extension works as an HTTPS proxy. It uses port 443, which blends in with ordinary web browsing and is enough to get past most school and workplace filters. National-scale censorship systems are a different class of adversary, and they can identify that pattern.

The desktop and mobile apps use a transport specifically built to resist that kind of inspection. It is considerably harder to block than the extension’s proxy path, which is why it is what we recommend where filtering is heaviest.

If you open the extension while in one of the regions above, it will tell you the same thing: a banner appears reading “Internet restrictions in your region?”, pointing you to the apps. That banner is not an upsell. The apps genuinely have the better chance of connecting.

Download them from the Downloads page.

If it still won’t connect

Switch locations

If one location is blocked, another may not be. Address-based blocking is applied server by server, so a location added recently, or one that is less popular, may still be reachable. The app already tries the other servers within a location for you before it reports a failure.

Reconnect deliberately, not automatically

If the tunnel drops, traffic falls back to your normal connection until it comes back. In an ordinary setting that is a minor annoyance. Where the network is monitored, that gap matters. Reconnect yourself rather than leaving something to reconnect in the background unattended.

Keep HTTPS on

If the VPN does drop, HTTPS still stops the network from seeing what you are reading on a page, though not which site you visited. That is a meaningful second layer, not a substitute for the VPN.

Staying safe, beyond the connection

  • Using an unapproved VPN where they are banned can carry real legal consequences. Know the law where you are, not where the service is.
  • A VPN hides your network path, not your identity. Signing in to an account tied to your real name reveals you regardless of how the traffic got there.
  • Turn off browser sync, location services, and photo location metadata. These leak your real location whether or not the VPN is connected.
  • Assume your device may be inspected at a border crossing where electronics are searched. If you are travelling into a restrictive country with privacy tools installed, look up that country’s current practice first.

If WorkingVPN doesn’t work in your country at all

That is a possible outcome, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise. We build the service to be as resistant as we can while keeping it safe to operate, but in the most heavily censored environments no VPN can promise to work.

If you want to keep troubleshooting: