"Error: YouTube has blocked your IP address for watching videos. Please try changing your VPN or proxy."

Help & support
1

Hello,

Thank you for the great work and this very interesting white paper.
The installation went perfectly (on a Debian-based Linux) and the whole process seemed very clear to me. The application is very clean, it’s great work (so thank you Mullvad if I understood correctly)

I wanted to test and encountered a problem, which I already had before, but which I thought could be worked around with Warren.

I use a Wireguard server on my personal server.
I use Freetube to watch YouTube videos and it worked well.
I wanted to install an Invidious instance on my server. This worked for 2-3 weeks, then I received errors stating that my IP had been blocked. Since then, I can no longer use Freetube (via my VPN) and therefore have to use a properly maintained Invidious instance.

By reading your white paper, I thought I could try to use Warren to watch my little videos peacefully, since, thanks to QUIC, I would not be identified as using a VPN – unlike when using my Wireguard – and YouTube had certainly not yet blocked the exit IP addresses of Warren servers.

Alas, guess what… I still have this message on Freetube.

And if I go directly to YouTube (with Warren enabled) (or without, for that matter) (on a “disposable browser” in private browsing mode, with just uBlock), I get a message asking me to log in to prove I’m not a robot.

Perhaps in this case, it should be imagined that it is rather a problem of detecting the Freetube client, but their support assures me that this is not the case.

I would like to know if my understanding of Warren is correct and that this warning message is not related to the nature of my connection when I use Warren (i.e., that YouTube should not detect that I am using a VPN)?

Thank you in advance for your clarifications!

Gusik

2

Hello,

Thank you for your feedback!

So yes, it’s normal for YouTube and some services: what makes your connection detected as a VPN is the IP address of our exit nodes, which are for the moment, quite conventionally, located in data centers. The IP addresses are therefore categorized as non-residential (datacenter IP).

What is currently undetectable with us is our protocol itself, WarrenGuard, which should allow you to bypass any type of firewall.

The second pillar to make our service entirely undetectable is the infrastructure, which constitutes the second phase of our project, as soon as we have the means.

We will refine our communication to be much clearer and more transparent on these aspects.

Thank you for your support, feel free to share the beta around you and continue your feedback, it helps us move forward!