Snowflake is a system that allows users to circumvent web censorship by helping them access the Tor network through a network of volunteers who act as intermediaries by providing their own internet connection.
It works by connecting the volunteer with the person in need, creating an entry connection to the Tor network disguised as a simple voice or video call using the WebRTC protocol.
To assist, the volunteer only needs to install an extension on their Firefox or Chrome browser and activate it while browsing normally.
Alternatively, you just need to activate snowflake in the box below and keep this web page open:
The connection between the user and the Snowflake node is encrypted, making it difficult for any external party to identify the use of the proxy or intercept the transmitted data.
Moreover, volunteers providing their connections cannot see the content of users’ Tor traffic since the communication is encrypted and anonymized. This ensures that volunteers remain anonymous and protected from any legal or technical liabilities related to users’ use of the Tor network.
My Statistics
As of today (2024-09-08), these are the statistics from my snowflake proxy active 24/7:
[All time ] Served 17305 People with ↑ 600.4478 GB, ↓ 51.4695 GB
[Last 24h ] Served 142 People with ↑ 1.909 GB, ↓ 0.1895 GB
[Last Week] Served 929 People with ↑ 37.1811 GB, ↓ 2.778 GB
Self-Hosting a Snowflake Proxy
In advanced mode, it is also possible to run snowflake standalone on your own infrastructure, and for this, you can use Docker.
The documentation mentions opening various ports to facilitate communication; however, this is not strictly necessary, and snowflake will work through NAT Traversal regardless.
With the script below, you can analyze the connections to your proxy: