I did this. Used a vpn over in Japan to get onto the Facebook in USSR. I looked for prominent people by the name of Sergey. he happens to be a rock star with a smallish following on Facebook. I could have chosen better but managed to engage Russians directly. The comments are rolling and more pics are being put on by people…
4m ago07:52
Dan Milmo
In the week since the Kremlin blocked Facebook, hundreds of thousands of Russians have sought to circumvent the ban using a virtual private network, the Guardian’s global technology editor Dan Milmo reports.
A VPN creates an encrypted connection between your device and a remote server, which can be anywhere in the world, so in theory you can access sites blocked in your country.
Nikolay*, a Russian who now lives in the EU, says his friends back home bought a VPN in order to communicate with him and others amid fears that access to the outside world could become limited. “There is a lot of talk that people should get these VPNs as soon as possible,” says Nikolay.
Over the past week VPNs have been in strong demand in Russia.
Internet searches for VPN services in the country almost doubled between 4 March and 10 March compared with the previous week, according to Top10VPN, a UK company that reviews and recommends private network services. There were at least 260,000 searches on 5 March alone, the day after Facebook was banned.
“By replacing their Russian IP address with that of the remote server, which will typically be in another country, using a VPN means Russians can access internet services that are blocking Russian traffic,” says Simon Migliano, head of research at Top10VPN.
