OUTSIDE OF THE PRINTER PART (cant believe have to go all caps but that’s the thing with PG people, they dont usually read till it happens)
Outright telling them “not to use those” is again, widly unhelpful to those suffering in the situation.
And while I haven’t spotted the call part, it probably is 2 folds, one is Wifi calling or VoLTE but those usually dont get routed to the VPN so im curious why they dont work
There are mutliple troubleshootings possible
first, try with wifi calling off and on, wifi calling doesnt route through the VPN if on, may be a thing with VoLTE or not
Another is to try turning off VoLTE all together, at the cost of call quality but probably more stable if they can and they do not lose phone calls that way (unless they live in a country where VoLTE is mandated)
second, split tunnel just the dialer app, OP doesn’t need to go drastic and try every app service that may be a hint of dialer, just try dialer.
Otherwise without being like a physical technician who’s repairing a customer’s phone, I cannot exactly figure out outside of that.
The fault is 100% in the user’s home network. I probably have 30 devices on my own network and I’ve never even heard of these problems that are supposedly common. And I’m 100% certain my network is far more complex.
Android (based on GOS), only disables 2G not 3G though and I think and I could be incorrect, Samsung doesnt have the option to disable 2G/3G calling anyways.
Personally I have tried 2G Blocking, I actually was getting very poor reception compared to just allowing it. [Maybe it doesn’t help my Pixel 7 is a US Model, operating in Europe but still] (of course now that I have 4G Calling, ill likely try disabling 2G again, this was without 4G Calling)
The only noticeable difference with VoLTE and 3G is literally mostly just call quality backend aside.
With that said it is something to try and root down what the problem is mostly, not to permanently disable, if it somehow works without VoLTE, yes quality goes down but you’re not losing cellular calls (and can try to get it back up with enough effort by necessary parties or not). [And when it comes to calling in general, Ironically Signal is just better to use with mobile data honestly but of course this isn’t something easy for people to get used to].
I could also be naive and it might actually be a bug from Samsung’s OS but that’s why I said I can only do so much diagnosis from just without being physically there but yeah
I have the same exact issue. I’m using my Android because I just don’t want to carry my laptop around. Proton and Mullvad VPN’s are on and off 100 times a day. Frankly though, I had ExpressVPN for years and it worked great then all of a sudden some of my apps wouldn’t open. Then website servers would block me. I’m guessing the powers that be are blocking traffic from VPN IP’s. ALL of them. I’ve tried others too, same thing. I also use Brave. It’s a great browser but it always has some kind of an issue. The captcha issue with Brave and VPN is a monumental pain in the rear. BUT, if you use the built in VPN, it doesn’t do it. Hmmmmm. I’ve switched over to the Beta thinking they might have found that particular bug and fixed it. Nope, same thing. I spend so much time with my browser, VPN, and security every day, it should be illegal.
I’m wondering if Cloudflare Warp is useful. Half the web (made up number but it feels like it) is behind Cloudflare servers so surely they won’t block their own IPs? Or?
If that’s true then perhaps you could chain a normal VPN (for privacy/no-log and changing countries) and then Cloudflare Warp (for accessing websites without captchas). It should be possible to chain these with a custom Wireguard configuration. I think Warp doesn’t give you control over which country’s IP you get from them but it will try to find a server close to you so by changing your country in the normal VPN first you are likely to get the same country in Warp.
Just an idea, I have no idea if it works in reducing captchas while still retaining privacy (from your ISP & Cloudflare) and avoiding censorship.
Editing to add: consider if a compartmentalized approach to privacy makes sense given your threat model. Privacy guides put together a good video on compartmentalization recently that can get you thinking about privacy in a different way, that may well decrease friction of making privacy a priority in your life
I did consider trying that as well. There’s a very wide range of opinions as to how “intense” you have to get with privacy for it to be effective at all, unfortunately, and I think I got caught up in that.
I use Brave Search almost exclusively on mobile, and exclusively in one browser. I have always had captchas too while using a VPN on mobile. It’s quite annoying.
In the last couple of months, I have also noticed that more and more YouTube videos won’t stream because of my VPN, and it has nothing to do with geo-locked content. Moreover, as much as I love FreeTube, half the time it doesn’t work when you have a VPN enabled.
I understand your frustration, but I’m definitely not going to give up using a VPN. I hope VPN providers find a solution to fight back. I don’t think it would ever happen, but it would be amazing if new ISPs got into the privacy and VPN business. It might make a difference.
I stopped using Brave Search precisely because of the captchas. I now use Mullvad Leta as my default search engine and it’s easily configurable in both Vanadium and Brave (desktop and mobile). For images I use Startpage.
The biggest obstacles I encounter are related to YouTube. Google is making things very difficult both regarding VPNs and ad/tracker blockers. Since I don’t use a Google account, I need “aggregators” like PipePipe or Grayjay, but these have been causing many problems lately. There’s little that can be done. Before I stop using a reliable VPN like Mullvad, Proton or iVPN, I’d rather throw my phone in the trash.
I get hit with bad exit servers with Proton on occasion, and just switch locations. It’s a roll of the dice, but switching locations until you find one that works is better than just picking one location and turning it on/off. That actually makes your problem worse because now your accounts are showing going between 2 IPs, one being VPN and one not, and you might get flagged to get more captchas and scrutiny over hacked account concerns.
For the most touchy sites in the US, I won’t use secure core servers and switch to a random US-CA or US-AZ or US-GA server. But if you try and sign up for something like LinkedIn, they’ll block any VPN connection out of principle.
Most VPNs also don’t allow port forwarding, and the port numbers that are used for VoIP and Wifi calling typically aren’t supported by most VPNs. I ran into this issue with Nord, it persists across Proton. For that you need to turn off the VPN. Blame your phone carrier for this, not the VPN.
Using a VPN shouldn’t be a hassle, and many of us use them 24/7 without major issues. Proton has good customer service (if you’re paying), so reach out to them and see if you can get any help as well.
I do not use a VPN, but I use Tor for all of my traffic. All non-Tor egress is dropped at the firewall.
I think too many people fall into the trap of yielding their privacy to get a vendor’s broken service working.
I approach this in a different way. Instead of wasting my time troubleshooting the vendor’s faults, I fire the vendor, and replace it with a company that would rather service their customers instead of surveilling them.
That’s a very hardline logic that leaves no room for exceptions of nuance when evaluating on this type of an issue. What you’re suggesting is not always possible.
I only just figured out what was going on when I reinstalled my browser, typed Kagi into the search bar, and then bam, robot tests. I messed around with it for a bit and after about fifteen minutes, I had to log into Kagi. I really, really recommend Kagi for this situation. I’ve probably gotten as many tests in the last year as I did in those fifteen minutes without it.
I did use Kagi for a bit! It was nice, but I got better results with Brave and DDG, even after configuring it, so I stopped paying for it. I’m glad it’s working well for you though!