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Offshore VPS for a Signal Proxy
Activists in countries that block Signal (Cuba, Iran during protest periods, China, parts of Russia at times) need TLS proxies to reach the Signal network. The Signal Foundation publishes a proxy spec that anyone can host. Running a Signal proxy is a low-effort, high-impact civic action - the resource cost is small, and one proxy can serve many users. This page covers hosting a Signal TLS proxy on an Anubiz offshore VPS.
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How the Signal proxy works
Signal's official TLS proxy is a small Nginx container that forwards encrypted traffic to chat.signal.org. The proxy itself sees only ciphertext - it cannot read messages, cannot identify users, cannot log anything meaningful. Users in censored countries configure the proxy address in Signal Settings > Data and Storage > Proxy. The proxy address is just a DNS name and port. Bandwidth usage scales linearly with active users; a single proxy can serve a few thousand active users on a small VPS.
Sizing and install
A Signal proxy runs on a 2 vCPU, 2 GB RAM Anubiz VPS without strain. The official signalapp/Signal-TLS-Proxy GitHub repo provides the Dockerfile. Install Docker on Ubuntu LTS, clone the repo, run docker compose up. Point a DNS record to your VPS IP, get a TLS certificate via certbot, and you are operational. Total setup time: 30 minutes. Resource cost: trivial.
Anubiz binding
Anubiz offshore VPS plans from $17.90/mo. For Signal proxy use specifically, choose a location with good geographic spread relative to your target user base. Romania for Europe and Middle East reach, Iceland for higher resilience to political pressure. Crypto payment, no KYC. Internal links: /en/anonymous-vps, /en/hosting-for-activist-secure-comms-stack, /en/hosting-for-mesh-network-node.
Civic-action framing
Running a Signal proxy is a small, durable contribution. Publish the proxy address in places where activists in target countries will find it - never publicly tied to any individual identity. Expect to rotate the proxy address periodically if it gets blocked by the target country's firewall. The cost is one VPS and a few minutes of attention per month.
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