Fool the censors and stay online. That’s the goal of VPN company Amnezia, which on Tuesday released a new protocol designed to help its customers stay a step ahead of governments around the world that are trying to restrict or block internet access.

AmneziaWG 2.0 is an update on AmneziaWG version 1.5. and a “fundamental shift” in how the new protocol works, the company said. It’s a new twist on preventing some government censors from knowing when someone is using a VPN to access otherwise restricted apps and sites. 

A VPN protocol is the set of rules your device follows when it talks to an internet server. AmneziaWG is built on the existing WireGuard protocol, a popular protocol used by many other VPNs, but with a couple of added layers of obfuscation.

Mazay Banzaev, founder of Amnezia, told CNET that the “internet is being broken apart” in various countries and that a VPN is one of the few tools some people have to access the web.

“Countries with censorship invest heavily in technologies to prevent users from visiting the open web,” Banzaev said. “Today, they no longer just block specific websites in Iran — instead, they try to restrict much of the internet by default, leaving access only to those who are explicitly allowed.”

Amnezia, an open-source VPN company based in Cyprus, was founded in 2020 and has 2.5 million monthly active users for its free service.

Internet censorship is rampant in many parts of the world. According to VPN provider Surfshark’s Internet Shutdown Tracker, 17 Asian countries and nine African countries are currently restricting social media and messaging apps. Russia and Belarus are the two European nations with the highest amount of internet censorship. No countries in North America, South America and Oceania have similar restrictions.

Using a VPN isn’t an option for most Iranians, who are under a near-total blackout imposed by the government since the war with the US and Israel began earlier in March. Russia, mired in a four-year war with Ukraine, is also cracking down on Internet connectivity.

Amnezia’s products include a premium version priced at $28 for six months or $48 for a year, along with a free version, a self-hosted VPN and a business version. The company has large customer bases in Russia, Iran and Myanmar, with a growing interest in Africa.

In March, WhatsApp recommended Amnezia and Mullvad as VPNs to use for people who need to access the Meta-owned messaging app, especially where it’s restricted.  

What’s a VPN?

VPN is an abbreviation for virtual private network, which basically sums it up. It’s a way of connecting to the internet that encrypts your web traffic — scrambling the data so that no one can read it — and masks your IP address to hide your physical location. An IP address is a unique numerical label assigned to every device connected to the Internet. No two are the same.

VPNs can help people stream things like sporting events in other parts of the world that they would not have access to otherwise because of geographical restrictions and regional blackouts. For example, a VPN could help someone in a US location access Sky Sports in the UK to watch Premier League soccer games. More critically, using a VPN can help people access the internet in parts of the world where governments have strict restrictions.

When you log into a VPN from your computer, the VPN establishes a secure connection between your computer and the internet by running your traffic through an encrypted tunnel to a server in a remote location. Your ISP won’t know what websites you visit or what apps you use.

CNET has a trove of great VPN content, and if you’re ready to rock and roll on one, we have recommendations for the best ones for free as well as the best ones for iPhones, streaming and best overall.

If you’re still on the fence about using a VPN, here are ways to figure that out and our six reasons why you should.

How AmneziaWG 2.0 fools the censors

Governments with advanced internet censorship technology sometimes can figure out who is using a VPN, especially with a process called deep packet inspection. Data typically travels over the internet in small packets. A VPN can encrypt data packets, but deep packet inspection may be able to identify a VPN protocol itself and then block people from using it, thus nullifying people’s attempts at obfuscation.

Amnezia says its 2.0 version can mimic legitimate protocols to make VPN traffic indistinguishable from regular internet surfing. It will appear as if you’re using your regular internet connection, when in fact you’re using the VPN in disguise, and Amnezia says 2.0 will help you maintain that cloak throughout your internet session.

The company said signature packets are the most significant innovation in the 2.0 version. The protocol sends up to five packets that mimic a standard network request, which fools the deep packet inspection into approving the connection. The Amnezia VPN then initiates the real connection.

“In the second version, we kept some of the solutions from our first protocol but modified them to make the connection indistinguishable from legitimate UDP-based traffic: a DNS request, a QUIC session or a SIP call,” Banzaev said. 

It’s all about trying to “stay ahead of the curve” to beat government censors, he said.