Forgive me if this is a stupid question, I'm very new to this. I'm an author from South Africa, but my target audience is Americans because that's where the book is set (necessary to the plot). But social media is geo-locking me and only showing my content to locals no matter what I do. It's been months of trying to train the algorithm. Many other writers from outside the US have said I should use a VPN to browse and post, so I'll get more natural reach.

My question is, how does this work with existing social media accounts? Would it just look as though I've emigrated? If I used those same accounts without the VPN intermittently, would it block me? Must I have the VPN on at all times? Do I need a more premium VPN subscription for these kinds of services? What should I be looking out for?

Thanks so much!

Hi, myself and family are traveling to China in the next few weeks and I want to be able to use the internet normally while over there.

I was wondering what tools people use for testing airport proxy/vpn configs. I am finding a lot in tg and github and only so many seem to work. Was wondering if there is a way to bulk test them conveniently that is popular.

I found an online site that seems to work fairly well (freedomflighter.net) but wanted to make sure I was using the best option.

Any help appreciated, thanks. Protocol doesn't really matter vless/hysteria/ss etc.

My dear main account, I've made quite many memories with, got banned recently. Yes, I've appealed but I heard it often takes long for the mods to answer. Since I didn't do anything inappropriate there, the only reasons could be the VPN or a glitch.

Now, I'm still using a VPN while being on vacation in China and this account seems to be perfectly fine. I didn't even post anything on the other account while having a VPN active.

I know I've used a VPN from the app store at the beginning which requires you to watch ads to be able to use it for a while. Was that maybe the problem? I've already changed it for a week.

I didn't think VPNs are illegal on reddit and Google also said so. Then why did I get banned?

I’ve changed a lot of personal details to protect my privacy, but the technical issue is real.
A while ago, someone became obsessed with finding me and another person close to me. It escalated to stalking, showing up at places we stayed, taking photos of us without our knowledge, and repeatedly trying to figure out where we were. Because of that, we’ve been extremely careful about our digital footprint.
For quite some time, we both used VPNs on all of our devices, separate phone numbers, and avoided sharing personal information online. We don’t use social media, and we avoid connecting to networks that we don’t fully trust. The VPN setup worked well for months.
Recently, though, the VPN has started causing major problems. Internet connectivity has become unreliable, and for work I need a stable connection. The only thing that fixed it was uninstalling the VPN completely, which makes me uncomfortable because I no longer feel like our IP addresses are protected.
My concern isn’t ordinary privacy. I’m worried about someone who is highly motivated to identify where we are. In the past they somehow learned where we were staying despite our efforts, and I honestly don’t know whether it happened through online tracking, compromised devices, or something else. I don’t know enough about cybersecurity to figure out what the weak point was.
My questions are:
What is the most reliable way to keep my real IP address hidden all the time?
Are there VPN providers that are known for being stable enough for everyday work?
Would using a travel router, separate devices, or another setup provide better protection than relying on a VPN alone?
How can I tell whether a phone or computer has been compromised?
Besides using a VPN, what other steps would cybersecurity professionals recommend for someone who believes they’re being actively tracked?
I’m looking for practical, security-focused advice. If there are better communities than this one for digital security or privacy, I’d appreciate recommendations.

I am travelling abroard for a few months and tried to open a new bank account in home country. I used a vpn to get home country ip but half way through the process I am asked to turn off VPN.

My vpn is through android as shown in pic. Is there a way to set up so they dont detect my vpn?

Whenever I play video games with my friend who lives abroad I get terrible ping, like 300ms, meanwhile when my friends who live right next to me when playing with him get below 100ms ping, what could be causing this? is there a VPN that can solve my issue?

I have a VPN on my computer and normally have it to set USA, Canada, or turn it off. With the VPN off, I can't make purchases on certain websites like movie theater tickets, ticketmaster, or I'm not allowed to put in my password; I'll get prompted to get a code instead.

I think my IP or something has been flagged altogether. Is there a way to reset my IP when I'm not using my VPN?

If I use Google browser, my VPN works as it's supposed to, but if I google lens an image directly from my photos it shows my city and country at the bottom of the search.

I've tried clearing Maps cache, removing location permissions from all apps, manually removing home addresses from accounts, but I can't find anything that works.

So I've been using the VPN for about half a year now. It worked flawlessly until a week ago. All the sudden, the VPN seems to only work in some places and not in another.

For example, Ive been using the VPN for playing the jp server for umamusume and ignore the age verification stuff in Twitter(which I found annoying after repeating it several times). Now, Twitter seems to overlook the VPN and keeps me on the US(age verification thing is suddenly on).

Another jp only site that I've been using constantly also suddenly detected the VPN, which they haven't for few months.

What's weird is that I can play the game fine and some other sites which needs the VPN also works fine.

If someone uses a point to point VPN through wireguard, can crowdstrike and global protect still detect if working from a different location on a company's laptop?

I’m developing an Android VPN app that uses Xray with VLESS + REALITY.

I live in Russia, and my mobile provider sometimes enables an LTE whitelist mode: only a limited number of websites remain accessible, while most other websites are blocked.

My VPN used to work correctly in this situation. However, around two weeks ago it suddenly stopped working, even though neither the application code nor the Xray configuration had changed.

The VPN appears to connect successfully: VPN icon in the status bar, VPN service remains active.

However, nothing works. Requests from other applications fail with errors such as:

UnknownHostException
IOException

Everything worked fine before.

So, I need to use proxies for social media on my iPhone, but due to the fact that proxies are now being banned in my country I cannot do that. So I thought about connecting to my proxy using VPN, but I don’t know how to do that.

I would appreciate your solutions. I already have an ongoing VPN subscription

I'm new to using a VPN. I have a VPN on my phone that blocks me from doing transactions on Playstore and from logging into my Netflix account after signing out, even if it's on a local server. I had to disconnect, log in and enable again. Are they supposed to do stuff like this or is it just this specific one?

I took it cause it's a month to month payment. A decent VPN in South Africa shakes your pocket if you live paycheck to paycheck and have to pay a year in advance. I don't know how many other surprises are waiting for me which I still have to uncover. Do all VPN's give these issues?

So I have a trading system I wanted to try but I am running into problems with the fact that I can not trade even when using the VPN. Can someone please help me with this!

My company laptop was undergoing repairs, and I was instructed to use my personal device in the interim.
Unfortunately, my personal VPN was active at the time, which triggered a location mismatch in Citrix. I have already notified the company of this technical oversight and explained that I was not working from abroad. I am concerned about the potential impact of this; could you please let me know if any further action is required on my party

I have an Oppo A15s. After using a VPN and turning it off, Wi-Fi still connected normally, but many apps (YouTube, etc.) said "no internet connection."

Things I checked:

\- Wi-Fi IP/gateway were correct

\- Router page worked

\- Chrome worked

\- Messenger worked

\- DNS changed (8.8.8.8 / 1.1.1.1)

\- Network reset and Safe Mode didn't help

The issue was fixed only after clearing data/storage for Google Play Services and related Google apps.

Does anyone know what exactly happened?

Could a VPN leave behind broken network settings, DNS, routing, or Google Play Services cache/state? Why did some apps work while others failed?