We are still recovering from a full-scale cyberattack — unfortunately, it also affected Amnezia Pulse. For this reason, the June digest was compiled using data from third-party sources. We hope that in July we will rely more on our own data.
This month, we are releasing two versions of the digest, including one with news from the Russian Federation — stay informed about regional internet censorship
GitHub Users From Iran Shared Their Fight Against Blockages
At the peak of restrictions in Iran, all traffic to the global internet was cut off. When the filtering was eased slightly, users shared bypass methods on GitHub.
Without going into details, the speakers went through numerous methods and tools, including:
- SNI spoofing — a censorship circumvention method where an application pretends to connect to an allowed website but transmits traffic to a blocked one.
- Low TTLTime to Live — a DNS settings parameter that instructs network devices and ISPs to cache information for as little time as possible. DPIDeep Packet Inspection systems failed to detect the actual request to blocked servers in time and opened the connection.
- TCP sequence number manipulation — users sent “packets from the future” to target servers to confuse DPI systems, which either accepted these packets as legitimate or ignored them.
- A Psiphon forkModified version called Shir-o Khorshid — used to connect to newly discovered Akamai Edge IP addresses. The method proved unstable and region-dependent.
The bottom line: Playing by the rules of censors who modify blocking architecture on the fly is difficult, and while conventional tools are short-lived, loopholes always exist. According to the discussion participants, satellite internet remains the most reliable option.
Social Media Bans for Teenagers: New Countries
The global trend of restricting minors' access to social media intensified in June.
On June 15, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced plans to ban social media use for children under 16. He acknowledged that the law would be difficult to pass and even harder to enforce but promised to see it through — the legislation is planned to be passed by the end of the year and implemented by spring 2027. Whether the Prime Minister's resignation on June 22 will affect the government's plans remains unclear.
On June 18, a US Federal Court of Appeals allowed the state of Ohio to introduce restrictions for children under 16, requiring platforms to verify age and obtain parental consent.
On the same day, UAE authorities banned teenagers under 15 from using social media.
Brazil, Greece, Norway, and Spain had previously resorted to similar measures.
Meanwhile, after six months of introduction in Australia, such measures have proven ineffective. According to studies by the British Medical Journal, teenagers bypass restrictions by using private browsers and VPNs, creating fake accounts, or logging in with accounts of adults. Around 85% of Australian teenagers continue to use social media.
India Blocked Telegram
On June 16, India restricted access to Telegram for six days — the Ministry of Education stated that the platform was used to leak materials for the national medical entrance exam, NEET-UG. The app disappeared from regional App Stores and Google Play.
The Delhi High Court rejected the messenger's appeal against the blockage, which triggered a record surge in interest in VPNs and alternative messengers.
TürkiyeSuppresses Criticism of the NATO Summit
Ahead of the conference scheduled to take place in Ankara on July 7–8, Turkish authorities blocked websites criticizing the military alliance. By court order, the NatoDefol (“NATO out”) website, an anti-NATO petition, and the Sol newspaper were blocked. The latter was targeted for criticizing city officials who repaired roads only in anticipation of the summit.
For the duration of the forum, concerts, demonstrations, and mass events are banned, civil servants have been placed on mandatory leave, and exams have been postponed.
nLighten Triggered a Cascading Outage Among Hosting Providers
On June 3, the Dutch data center nLighten disconnected the power supply to MIRhosting's equipment in the Netherlands and Germany without warning. This led to a complete blackout of servers used by some Russian providers.
Latvian Authorities Blocked Russian Websites
On June 8, the National Electronic Mass Media Council (NEPLP) ordered the blocking of several Russian internet resources for “spreading military propaganda and violating legislation on prohibited symbols.” The blacklist includes marketplaces Wildberries, Labirint.ru and LiveLib.ru, as well as sports sites Sovetsky Sport and Championat.com, news outlets of RBC Companies media holding, and several other websites.
The Constitutional Court of Kazakhstan Authorized Internet Shutdowns
On June 9, the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Kazakhstan issued a ruling on the complaint of activist Elzhan Kabyshev, who challenged the legality of internet shutdowns carried out by decision of the NSCNational Security Committee. The court recognized such shutdowns as legal.
The complaint was filed as part of a campaign against shutdowns — the response from the Constitutional Court means that the legal mechanism for arbitrary network shutdowns in the country is now consolidated at the constitutional level. However, the authority recommended clarifying certain provisions of the legislation that have overly broad and imprecise interpretations.
Monthly Summary
In June, the most alarming trend was the restriction of network access for minors. We believe that protecting childhood can coexist with freedom of information, so we urge authorities to refrain from a restrictive approach, and digital IDs in particular.
When compiling Amnezia VPN digests, we rely on anonymized data from user connections. Connect to Amnezia Free or Amnezia Premium to make the next issue as accurate as possible.
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