There is no governmental censorship going on as far as we know, but Your Freedom is nevertheless widely used in Nigeria. Though no-one really has ever told us what it is used for it's quite obvious that it's being used for toll bypassing on the country's mobile networks. I am sure you will understand that we cannot encourage you to use our service for criminal activity -- and toll bypassing is nothing else but fraud. On the other hand, we cannot tell nor do we want to tell whether you are using our service with your mobile provider's consent or not -- it is none of our business. Please use Your Freedom only via paid-for data connections.
We have been told that there are a number of blogs and forums on the Internet where other working solutions are being posted. Please note that as we are not offering our service for this kind of use we cannot guarantee that any of these solutions work, or will work permanently. Also, please not that if you are paying someone else to get you connected this does not bind us legally in any way.
More information on what we can do for you and what we cannot do can be found on our Mobile connections page. Please read this page! It will likely answer many of your questions.
Allow us one last remark. If you cannot get connected to our service without paying us, you won't succeed either if you pay. So please establish a working connection first!
Enable "ipuse" by dialling *406#
Try the Blackberry subscription.
If both are met, YF should be able to get you connected using UDP (port 500) and ECHO mode.
Enable the "Nigeria Glo" tweaks.
Try APNs "gloflat", "glosecure", "glolink" and "gloprofit".
Use "Nigeria Etisalat" tweaks with mode "https".
We have been told that you'll need some credit on your SIM. It will get used, but only very slowly.
Set the tweaks to "Nigeria Multilinks" and try POST or UDP. Make sure you have a current version of the YF client installed!
Please use the latest YF client version and enable the tweaks called "Nigeria ZAIN".
We're not sure about Vee but people seemingly are able to connect via HTTPS from their network, using proxy 172.18.254.5 and port 8080. You can also try the tweaks in the latest YF client version ("Nigeria ZAIN" should do).
(Please provide input!)
We believe that UDP port 53 is working.
(This could be outdated information.)
We do not permit FreeFreedom users from Nigeria on some of our servers. If you are being told by the server that your authentication is not valid for the country you are connecting from, then this is why. Please use other servers, writing to support about it is no good at all. On ems02, ems15 and ems32 we do not permit connections from Nigeria at all (but there are plenty of other servers).
Why do we do it? Because we've got a problem with SPAM. While we are filtering SPAM sent via SMTP very effectively (because it is possible) there is nothing we can do about a new way of sending SPAM: through vulnerable web mail servers via HTTPS. How do you block malicious access to a server that you don't control and that you don't even know? We cannot look into the connection (that's what SSL is all about!) so we don't see what is going on. We only learn about the latest SPAM flood when our providers receive notifications that an IP address in their network is a source of SPAM, and of course they don't take it friendly. So far we've been able to avoid further measures by the providers but this won't go on forever.
Right, you might say, but what has it got to do with FreeFreedom users from Nigeria? The simple and sad-but-true answer is: because most of the SPAM is sent by FreeFreedom users from Nigeria. Few paid-for accounts, almost no other country. Whenever we receive a note from a provider and trace it back (we keep one-way hashes of connection details for short periods so we can trace back SPAM and other abuse, but we haven't got logs telling us what people do), and we receive lots of these notes, we end up in Nigeria. Therefore, blocking FreeFreedom users from Nigeria is the only selective means of PROACTIVELY blocking the SPAM. Blocking it REACTIVELY (by disabling user accounts and/or client installations) just isn't good enough -- we do that as well. Recently we have developed some automated means that are pretty effective but unfortunately not very selective.
Unjust? Yes. Clan liability? Yes, certainly. Self-defense? YES. We hate doing it but there's no other way. We have received many suggestions, for example - threaten them on the web page -- we do that already, no effect
- find them and kick them out -- we do that already, but new spammers emerge daily
- send email to all Nigerian users, telling them to stop -- this would make us spammers too and we don't spam; besides, it won't help at all
- detect the spamming and disable accounts automatically -- we do that too but the patterns change all the time and there is always a chance of misdetection
- "tell me and I'll do all I can about it" -- yeah, sure
- set up some kind of white-listing -- not feasible, way too much work that no-one pays for; and who would you put on it besides yourself?
- block their IPs -- the whole country is behind just a handful (literally) IP addresses -- how are we supposed to do it? All of them are being used for spamming
Please, do not send the same suggestions in other words to support. It is a waste of time for all of us.
Servers that currently accept FreeFreedom users from Nigeria: try ems03-ems10, ems18, ems12, ems19, ems29, ems30, ems31.
The reason is that the FreeFreedom account is only permitted to be used 6 hours per day and 15 hours per week. Please note that this restriction does not only apply to the account but also to the client installation (i.e. the PC) used. If several FreeFreedom accounts are used on the same PC they count as one for this PC, in other words: it is no good creating accounts by the dozen, it won't get you more free usage time.
If you see this message and you don't share your PC with anyone and you are sure you are not over the budget, update your YF client installation. The problem should be fixed in version 20090829-01 and above. Uninstall the YF client first before you install the new version. We cannot fix this for you, you need to fix it. If you have the latest YF client version on your PC and still have this problem, please run in dump mode (see the FAQ how to do this!) and reproduce the problem, then send us the dump.log file from your desktop together with a few explanatory words.
To check out why the servers believe you are over the time budget, log in to our web page and click on "ACCOUNT", then on "Usage time" on the left.
Please do not email support about this unless you have the latest client version and are put in the same drawer with strangers, the time restriction system is well-tested and works correctly.
We do not permit access to certain pages for Nigerian users. If you access them anyway (not casually... only if you click through the pages) your account will be disabled and your client installation will be banned. Both restrictions are automatically lifted after some hours.
Why do we do it? Unfair? No, it's not unfair. Neither Craigslist nor DBA nor any of the other pages on our list (we do not publish it for a reason... many webmail servers are on it too) offer services targeted at the Nigerian market. If you access them anyway chances are very high that you are not doing it for respectable reasons. We are simply fed up with having to deal with all the complaints and police investigations.
Yes, we know you are not doing anything wrong. You are not scamming people, you are not sending spam. But enough do. And our servers cannot tell the difference. Please consider it self-defense.
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