2

I live in a country where some sites such as Reddit are blocked. On wifi I can change my DNS to Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) and be able to access those sites, but on mobile network my ISP doesn't seem to allow me to do so. All the solutions I see are for non-rooted devices and only affect wifi networks. My device happens to be rooted Android 10, is there anything I can do to be able to access Reddit without wifi?

Thank you for your time.

  • Why not use a VPN or Tor/Orbot? If you have Firefox you can also use SwitchyOmega addon to use a proxy for Reddit. You'd need to provide a public proxy address of course. Be aware, public proxies are not trustworthy. But they are reasonably good to access blocked content though. – Firelord Jun 05 '20 at 17:03
  • 1
    DNS is not the only way to block sites. There is port blocking, IP blocking and protocol blocking (with DPI). But if you are sure it's only the DNS your ISP is intercepting, use encrypted DNS. I explained the whole process for dnscrypt-proxy (which supports both DoH and DoT) here: https://android.stackexchange.com/a/207647/218526. If you are interested only in web browser, Firefox does have built-in setting for encrypted DNS. Android 9+ also has Private DNS (DoT) which encrypts whole DNS traffic. – Irfan Latif Jun 05 '20 at 17:05
  • @IrfanLatif In the age of cloud IP blocking isn't working anymore. See "Russia vs. Telegram" - one time they were blocking Telegram IP on cloud server and Telegram was just moving to the next IP/cloud node. The only services(s) that were blocked were those that by chance were running on the same public IP like Telegram servers. – Robert Jun 05 '20 at 18:56
  • @Robert correct. But I'm saying that for sure that some MNOs (at least in my country) are still blocking IP addresses combined with other techniques, usually DPI e.g. for blocking porn sites and VPNs. I have also seen that ISPs whitelist IP ranges used by bigger cloud services like Amazon and Google. But whitelisting/blacklisting often goes wrong and users are found reporting odd situations. – Irfan Latif Jun 05 '20 at 19:02
  • @Firelord I'd prefer not having to pay for services, and I found that Tor makes connections unacceptably slow. It is a solution, but I'm looking for more. – 404 Name Not Found Jun 16 '20 at 05:22
  • @Irfan Latif The Private DNS feature on Android doesn't seem to work on mobile networks. I have it enabled, and it works as expected on wifi, however it doesn't seem to affect mobile networks at all. – 404 Name Not Found Jun 16 '20 at 05:23
  • @404NameNotFound I've been using dnscrypt-proxy even before the Private DNS feature was introduced. So I don't use the latter because of some other leak issues. But it definitely works with both WiFi and Mobile Data. That's what the AOSP code indicates. And I just tested it for you right now. Hotspot traffic is an exception though: https://android.stackexchange.com/a/214690/218526 – Irfan Latif Jun 16 '20 at 05:42
  • 1
    @Irfan Latif Thanks! dnscrypt-proxy works great for me. No noticeable speed drops while still allowing me to access sites I normally wouldn't be able to. – 404 Name Not Found Jun 16 '20 at 07:50

1 Answers1

1

DNS is not the only way to block sites. There is also port blocking, IP address blocking (though not very feasible and effective in the age of cloud as @Robert said) and protocol blocking (with DPI). See a brief description of censorship techniques here. But if you are sure it's only the DNS your ISP is intercepting, you can use encrypted DNS:

Irfan Latif
  • 20,353
  • 3
  • 70
  • 213