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Iran Allows VPNs To Make Millions In Profit

Posted by timothy on from the have-cake-and-eat-it-too dept.

New submitter Patrick O'Neill writes with this excerpt from The Daily Dot: Anti-censorship technology is de jure illegal in Iran, but many VPNs are sold openly, allowing Iranians to bounce around censorship and seemingly render it ineffective. Nearly 7 in 10 young Iranians are using VPNs, according to the country's government, and a Google search for "buy VPN" in Persian returns 2 million results. Iran's Cyber Police (FATA) have waged a high-volume open war against the VPNs, but it's still very easy to find, buy, and use the software. It's so easy, in fact, that you can use Iran's government-sanctioned payment gateways (Pardakht Net, Sharj Iran, Jahan Pay & Baz Pardakht) to buy the tools that'll beat the censors. To use these gateways, however, customers have to submit their Iranian bank account and identity, all but foregoing hopes of privacy or protection from authorities."

4 of 57 comments (clear)

  1. I thought VPN was easy to block by fustakrakich · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Maybe the government's censorship stance is a show to pacify the more conservative bunch of clerics.

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    1. Re:I thought VPN was easy to block by invictusvoyd · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Nope , the goverment officials are pocketing all the money .. They dont make the policies ( they are made by religious leaders .. khomeni etc. ) and they dont care .. and dont mind being rich

  2. Payment Gateway Access is No Accident by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The Iranian government benefits from having a list of individuals, identified by bank account no less, who have purchased certain goods or services online. A very handy tool to have when making threats, coercing cooperation or prosecuting those who refuse to cooperate. It also gives a good starting list for surveillance targets, narrowing their initial field to people who are likely to be more interesting and not caught by the blanket keyword filtering on the public and unencrypted Iranian intranet.

  3. Re:interesting application by tacokill · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The market would be more accessible to Iran if they would quit openly calling for the complete annihilation of Isreal. Stuff like that rightfully makes other nations skeptical of their intentions.