Snowflake: Helping people in dictatorships bypass internet censorship from your couch

yuval bloch

This isn’t my usual type of post, and it’s certainly outside my area of expertise. However, after following the recent news from Iran, I found a tool that more people should know about, which allows us to help people whose voices are silenced by the government with almost no effort.

If you want to help immediately without reading the technical details, just leave this page open and enable the widget below it, which will act as a “bridge” for someone in a censored region as long as your tab is active:

Even better: You can install the Google Chrome Extension to help whenever your browser is open. In this post, I’ll explain what Snowflake is, how it works, and address the “suspicious” side of things—including why it’s safer than it looks and when you might want to avoid it.

The Problem: Whitelists and Blackouts

In the context of the 2025-2026 protests in Iran, the regime doesn’t always shut down the internet entirely. Instead, they use “Whitelists”—allowing only government-approved sites and blocking everything else.

To bypass this, people need to make their internet traffic look like something “normal” (like a video call). That is exactly what you are doing when you run the Snowflake widget or extension: you are lending your IP address as a “tunnel” for traffic to pass through.

For a deeper look at how this specifically helps in Iran, I recommend this Reset.org article.

Tor: “Pass the Parcel” Technology

Snowflake works with the Tor Network. Think of Tor like a game of Pass the Parcel:

  • Each computer (node) receives a package, removes one layer of encryption, and passes it to the next.
  • No single computer knows the whole path. One knows the sender, one knows the destination, and others just know the “middle.”

Because it provides total privacy, Tor is used by human rights activists and journalists—but also by criminals. You have to decide if the “good” (freedom of speech) outweighs the “bad”. But supporting Snowflake is not exactly supporting Tor; it allows access to Tor specifically in censored countries. There, it is clearer that the good outweighs the bad.

Why do they need you?

Dictatorships are constantly playing “Whac-A-Mole.” As soon as they identify an IP address being used as a bridge, they block it. This is why numbers matter. If thousands of regular people like us act as temporary bridges, the regime simply cannot keep up. They can’t block the entire global internet.

Addressing the “Suspicion” (My Honest Take)

I was suspicious at first, too. Here is how I answered my own concerns:

  1. Can people break into my computer? No. The information passes through a secure tunnel; the user has no access to your files or your system.
  2. Will it look like I’m talking to “the enemy”? This was my biggest concern as an Israeli. If an Iranian user connects to me, my ISP sees a connection to Iran. However, in 2026, the Israeli security services are well aware of Snowflake. Unless you have a high-level security clearance or work for a defense company, being a “volunteer bridge” is recognized as a humanitarian act, not a security breach.
  3. Will I be linked to criminal activity? Because of the “Pass the Parcel” (Tor) architecture, your IP address is never the one that appears on the final website. You are the “entry,” not the “exit.”
  4. Can it be used for bad things? Yes. Any tool for freedom can be misused. But every source I’ve found suggests the benefit to suppressed civilians far outweighs the potential for misuse by criminals, who usually have much faster ways to hide their tracks anyway.
  5. Will the dictatorship target me? There are over 100,000 “Snowflakes” worldwide. Harming a random volunteer in another country is a waste of resources for them. They focus on blocking the technology, not the individuals.

Conclusion

If you believe that access to information is a human right, Snowflake is the easiest way to fight for it from your couch.