Tried every VPN, only Hotspot Shield works at School

VPN Forum
1

I’m a student and I’m trying to get a VPN working at school. I have tried so many different things and literally nothing works except for the basic, free version of Hotspot Shield. I’m a paying subscriber of NordVPN and I have basically tried every fix possible. Changing laptop DNS servers, obfuscated IPs, and OpenVPN (TCP). I’ve tried a manual connection with NordVPN using Wireguard and I even set up my own VPN (I have some networking experience) using a Raspberry PI at home and setting up a wireguard server. I’ve tried NordVPN’s built in mesh-nets as well.

I also paid for a 3-day subscription of AirVPN and went through every possible protocol they offer and connection method (theres like 50 of them). Nothing works.

How is Hotspot Shield, the free version at that, the only VPN that is able to get through whatever China-grade (not even since apparently even NordVPN works in China, one of the world’s most restrictive nations when it comes to this stuff) VPN detection my school has setup.

I’m not going to keep using Hotspot Shield because of their shady data collection practices that I’ve, admittedly, only read about. If you guys can confirm that Hotspot Shield is in fact safe, I have no problem paying for it if that’s what it takes to work.

Is there anything I can do or some other solution I can try? I love NordVPN and use it at home all the time but I just can’t belive that somethign I’m paying for is bested by something like Hotspot shield. Is it a disparity in their protocols (Hydra vs NordLynx vs TCP vs UDP)? Why is Hotspot Shield Hydra the only thing that works?

2

Setup pivpn at home with openvpn on tcp 443. Almost always can get through.

3

They’re probably using something like IPQS to detect if someone’s using a VPN/proxy. Could you try using a residential proxy instead?

4

Can you send the link for the website where you downloaded Hotspot VPN?

5

have you guys tried Atlas never had any problems with atlas

6

If that’s the case, how do I get a custom VPN server working then? I have a raspberry pi at home and I have tried using something like PiVPN to set one up. It still does not work. My IP shouldn’t be blocked because I’ve hosted sites before on it and those have been accessible on school wifi.

7

Just tried it today at school after setting it up yesterday, still just hangs on connecting and fails. I have everythign portforwarded correctly and from other unrestricted locations I can connect to my home VPN. My friend from about 10 miles away was able to connect and I was able to connect on my phone through data. Just doesn’t work at school. What else can I try?