I did this because I live in another country where the U.S. has sanctioned me from seeing a variety of things I could pay for if I lived in the U.S. - Australia. I'm just not under a regime that will kill you if they catch you...
Works great for websites, but can SOCKS5 transparently redirect DNS traffic? In the end I setup an OpenVPN server and setup port redirecting for DNS.
Well, I'm not doing anything political, so no one will catch me and kill me. I'm using it for exactly the same reasons as you, namely that the United States won't let me view some content, listen to some music and stuff. Even though I have to pay illegally to access this content (which is when I use my Canadian IP), I still am paying for them and must be able to use them.
I used another friend's credit card. There are some services here where some guy in another country who is originally Iranian will charge a fee to take your Iranian Rials and send them to a PayPal account, or go and pay for a service on another website on your behalf.
It costs extra money, but oh well. It's better than staying ignorant and not being able to improve and learn more.
So I need to convert AUD to USD to Rials and send them to an Iranian guy in the U.S. to pay for a Netflix account with a third party U.S. credit card and then figure out how to proxy my way through someone's U.S. Internet connection via a SOCKS5 proxy.
When you put it like this, it seems very impossible. But I've been doing the second part of it for two years, so if you need any help with that, just let me know. Haha.
Australia has a policy of capturing all metadata from ISPs. I suspect I might actually be more at risk of getting a knock on the door from our security agencies than you would be. And if I'm suspected of terrorism I can be held in jail for seven days without charge on a continually renewing basis.
Australia is not going to arrest you for using a proxy, unless you're using it to do something else illegal. Let's be realistic about the relative threat level in Australia vs Iran.
Yeah, because government agencies haven't been worried about Iranian terrorism in Australia since Man Honis took hostages in Martin Place and a teenager of Iranian background shot and killed a police accountant in Parramatta last year.
For myself, I know I'm not a terrorist, but transferring money like that looks mighty suspicious and it wouldn't be hard for the security agencies to get the wrong idea. They don't have to prove anything. Just ask Muhamed Haneef whether they make errors. Mick Keelty refused to even acknowledge the AFP treated an innocent man very badly. If you think a guy like the head of the AFP is this incompetent, then you should watch your step if you live in Australia.
It's not like I can defend myself in a court of law now, is it? Terrorism gets an end run around due process in Australia. And we've already seen how it can turn out - pretty fucking badly.
Works great for websites, but can SOCKS5 transparently redirect DNS traffic? In the end I setup an OpenVPN server and setup port redirecting for DNS.