Piracy shield in Italy - unavoidable even with a VPN?

Well, color me surprised when, with my Proton VPN enabled, I still faced a government-mandated MITM attack while attempting to visit 1337x.to

"AVVISO

L’accesso al presente sito, che diffondeva illecitamente contenuti protetti dal diritto d’autore, è stato disabilitato in esecuzione di un provvedimento dell’Autorità per le garanzie nelle comunicazioni ai sensi del Regolamento di cui alla delibera n. 680/13/CONS

Per maggiori informazioni visiti il sito www.agcom.it"

To be completely honest, I wasn’t aware this was possible when using a VPN. I’ve tried swapping to multiple servers within Proton, but all seem to be returning the same. Is there some commonly known workaround?

20 comments

Check your DNS
- Personal recommendation: https://ipleak.net is a good website to check your DNS, torrent protection, and some more useful info.

https://browserleaks.com/dns
And you need to configure protonvpn correctly so it uses their DNS. In the VPN world this is known as a 'DNS leak'.

Probably because of your DNS configuration?
- I'm thinking it must be a DNS configuration issue... Every server with ProtonVPN is showing the same, from the US to Netherlands to Switzerland. All of them.
  
  Someone described to me in detail how your computer resolves hostnames.
  https://fedia.io/m/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com/t/926852/-/comment/5928540

Switch to cloudlfare DNS or something similar.

My brother in Christ do not spread disinformation x)
I can access it without even using any vpn, just changed dns a lot of time ago and I never get that piracywall
Secondo me stai leakando i dns, controlla di averli configurati bene

Change your DNS resolver to one of these https://www.privacyguides.org/en/dns/

Use a DNS out of your jurisdiction, preferably a privacy focused one, that issue will go away.

Pretty sure its because of the piracy shield thingy. Secure Core might be an option as long as no Italian servers are used and you're using the VPNs DNS
https://torrentfreak.com/airvpn-stops-serving-italians-due-to-piracy-shield-blocking-requirements-240206/
“[A]ll parties in any capacity involved in the accessibility of illegally disseminated content – and therefore also, by way of example and not limitation – VPN and open DNS service providers, will have to execute the blocks requested by the Authority [AGCOM],” the notice read.
- Yes, it absolutely is a result of the piracy shield thingy. Secure Core does seem to work!

I'm using windscribe VPN from Italy and it works without issues right now

Try going through TOR to confirm its not a router software thing, if it works, you need another DNS (NextDNS is good) and then try again with Proton, if that doesn't work connect over a proxy or TOR with VPN.
https://www.proxysite.com/ might help as well
https://www.torproject.org/download/

In which country is the protonvpn server?
- I bet this is ops issue. Either the vpn auto selected the fastest server (probably in Italy) of op defaulted to a local server. Op should change server to a country with more lax rules (Netherlands?).
  
  Nope. Swapped to every other server ProtonVPN has. I'm thinking it might be a DNS configuration issue though, because yeah, I don't understand why a different server wouldn't end run around this.

Search "what is my ip" on your web search engine to see without and with a VPN connection, to see if you're really going through the VPN tunnel. Seems like you aren't.
- Can confirm that the IP address/location appears to change, but the block and AGCOM interception remains.

20 comments