Use obfuscated servers for extra privacy

Yes, it’s possible to see that you’re using a VPN by looking at your traffic patterns. That doesn’t mean your activities are visible — only your VPN use is. You can use obfuscated servers to hide the fact that you’re using a VPN.

While obfuscated servers are essential to bypassing China’s firewalls, they alone can’t guarantee that your VPN provider will work in China.

It takes complicated algorithms, advanced technologies, and continuous maintenance to keep a VPN service up and running for users in China. However, if your VPN provider offers obfuscation as Surfshark does, it’s a step in the right direction.

A VPN blocker is a tool that governments, ISPs, or website administrators use to deny access to a particular service when you connect to the internet with a VPN. The most commonly used method for preventing VPN access is by blocking specific IP addresses. Another common way is blocking ports that VPN tunneling protocols use, e.g., PPTP and L2TP. 

While a typical internet user can’t track you when you use a VPN, you’re never 100% anonymous online. That said, you’re much harder to track when you use a VPN.

A good VPN service encrypts your data and makes it unreadable to anyone else. Surfshark, for example, uses AEGIS-256X2, AES-256, and ChaCha20 encryption, which are considered the strongest encryption standards.

There’s no easy way to check if a VPN server is obfuscated. You’d first need to look into your traffic patterns, which have a specific footprint. If you can identify these patterns, and your traffic doesn’t show them when you turn on your VPN, you’re probably connected to an obfuscated server.

Keep in mind that this kind of inspection requires extensive technical knowledge. If you’re unsure where to start, you can ask your VPN provider’s customer support team for help.

Yes, connecting to obfuscated servers can affect your internet connection speed like any other VPN connection. If your ISP is restricting your internet access or throttling your speeds, however, connecting to obfuscated servers should actually improve speeds.

In most cases, the additional layer of encryption from obfuscation slows your internet connection a little more than a regular VPN connection. That said, advanced VPNs like Surfshark use the newest infrastructure and 10 Gbps servers to make that speed loss unnoticeable.

A double VPN routes your data through two VPN servers. Obfuscated servers only use a single server with a special stealth VPN protocol to hide VPN usage. 

However, a double VPN — like Surfshark’s Multi Hop feature —  also works on obfuscated servers.

Obfuscated servers aren’t necessarily better than traditional VPN servers, as the optimal choice depends on your specific needs.

Obfuscated servers hide your traffic to bypass censorship and enhance privacy, but they’re often slower due to the added encryption layer. On the other hand, standard servers are faster and simpler, but they don’t offer any traffic concealment.

Obfuscated servers can be better for you if privacy and censorship avoidance are priorities, but standard servers might be preferable for better performance and general browsing.

Obfuscated VPN servers can help VPN users by:

• Masking VPN activity: obfuscation hides the fact that you’re using a VPN from your ISP and network admins;
• Maintaining online security: although your VPN traffic is disguised, all your data remains fully encrypted;
• Avoiding detection: your VPN traffic patterns can’t be identified by DPI technology.