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[–] 38 points 6 days ago (1 child)

Unless it's an air gapped machine run for a specific reason, nobody should run Win7 in 2026. If it's connected to the internet, you are doing that at your own peril. Obligatory switch to Linux.

"Censorship" is probably not quite the right word here, is it? You're thinking more along the lines of privacy. Censorship is what a government does. And that would affect the content of the internet more than anything else you come in contact with. And that is roughly the same whether you run your browser on a Win7 or Win11 machine (save maybe some more modern features the outdated browsers cannot do).

If you're worried about the spectre of age verification, I would suggest switching to Linux and investing into a VPN.

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  • I'd recommend downloading Tails and flashing that to a USB stick, then booting from it. It won't touch your Windows 7 installation.

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  • [–] 11 points 6 days ago

    Censorship has many degrees to it, and your needs would be determined by your threat model. Once you are more aware of what you need, finding proper support should be easier. Otherwise you will wind up getting advice too extreme for your practical purposes.

    Obligatory 'just use linux'

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  • [–] 9 points 6 days ago

    This is a good place to start -> https://ssd.eff.org/

    “SURVEILLANCE
    SELF-DEFENSE

    TIPS, TOOLS, AND HOW-TOS FOR SAFER ONLINE COMMUNICATIONS

    A PROJECT OF THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION

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  • [–] 5 points 6 days ago* (2 children)

    wireguard

    is this china mainland? or some other country?

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  • [–] 4 points 6 days ago

    Github holds plenty of examples to bypass chinese great firewall. I would say you use a vps and set up those proxyies, a while ago it was shadowsocks. Today, idk. Maybe amneziawg. Not sure if you can make the clients work on windows 7, in any case just get a travel router set it up there and use that as the filter to your connection. Break down the problem into pieces. And yes, that router and/ or vps will have Linux (:

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  • It's unlikely any commercial VPN works on it. I tried three free-tier ones, Proton, Privado and Windscribe on Windows 8.1. Their last client versions supporting the OS are all already unsupported by the servers.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 days ago

    Air vpn's client was working as of about two years ago

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