FAQ
Some information might be outdated. Feel free to open an issue if you have any questions.
Thanks for contributing to this project!
NOTE: This FAQ is mostly aimed at users in mainland China; some cases described below may not apply to other countries/regions.
GFW has made use of a vulnerability in current protocol to identify and block these websites when you attempt to visit them. To fully fix this problem, you'll have to wait for the official release of the new protocol (a.k.a TLS 1.3).
This might take a moment, plus both your browsers/clients and their servers are required to upgrade in order to make it work.
By the develop schedule, upgraded browsers are expected to release in Januray 2018. The latest version of TLS 1.3 (draft 23) was released on January 5, 2018. It will be accepted on February 25 unless further changes occurs. Draft 24 was released on February 15, 2018. No further information at the moment.
Please consider using other method to use these services.
To Iran users: We can confirm that the Iran government is also using this method to block sites (Tested with Facebook). Unfortunately this means you'll also have to wait.
Except the WEB version, all Telegram clients are using IP to connect to Telegram servers directly. Since this process does not involve domain resolving, HOSTS will not work with Telegram clients.
This is also one of the reason why we provide public SOCKS5 proxies.
Meanwhile, due to the continuous attack caused by the Great Cannon, Telegram servers also denies access of most IPs from mainland China, that means you are likely unable to sign in even with domains of the WEB version in HOSTS file.
Why do some of the sites loading slowly - blank at the beginning and shows a bunch of mess after loading?
It is likely that these sites are using public resources provided by Google. Due to the reasons explained above, these sites will usually stuck at loading resources from Google until timed out. StackOverflow is a great example of such websites.
Please note that under most cases, when this problem occurs it does NOT mean the website is getting blocked; Even if we add them into HOSTS, things are probably not going to get better.
You'll have to use your favorite text editor to open a specific file with administrator permission:
Windows users: %WINDIR%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Linux/MacOS/Android users: /etc/hosts
Replace all the content with this.
For Android users, this means you'll have to get your device ROOTed. If you don't prefer this way, consider using Daedalus to do the trick.
