In many parts of the world, authoritarian governments prevent citizens from accessing information online by blocking access to websites, social media platforms, and communication tools. In places like Russia, China, Iran, Myanmar, and Belarus, people are unable to access independent news, communicate freely with their loved ones, or share sensitive content, such as exposing state-sponsored human rights abuses.

Action Mode is a crowdsourced computing project that uses the power of volunteers like you. When you enable Action Mode, your browser becomes part of a network of "digital bridges" to the open internet. Censored users connect to these bridges, allowing them to bypass government-imposed restrictions and access the information they need. This collective effort makes censorship harder to enforce, expanding access to the open internet.

Your browser helps facilitate these connections by securely routing traffic through Lantern’s servers, which act as the final endpoint. This ensures that your IP address is not tied to the content accessed, and all traffic remains secure and controlled by Lantern.

Action Mode is designed for people in uncensored regions who want to support internet freedom by volunteering a small portion of their internet connection. If you live in a country with unrestricted internet access, you can use Action Mode to help people in censored regions access the open internet.

If you’re in a censored region, download Lantern for free. It automatically connects you to the best available proxy, including Action Mode proxies, so you can easily access blocked content.

Yes! Action Mode is designed with your safety and privacy in mind. Connected users in censored regions cannot see anything you do on your computer or access your data, ensuring your online activities remain private, and secure.

Lantern’s servers handle the traffic before it reaches the requested websites or services. This ensures your connection is not directly linked to the content accessed, and your IP address is not visible to the sites that users in uncensored regions access. Additionally, Action Mode uses a safelist of approved sites to protect volunteers, ensuring your connection cannot be used to access objectionable or illegal content.

All connections are encrypted with multiple layers of security, including protocols like QUIC, WebTransport, and DTLS, to keep data secure during transit. Action Mode is also fully open source and licensed under the GPL-3.0 license, meaning our code is publicly available for anyone to review and contribute to.

No, you are not legally responsible. Your connection serves as a bridge to Lantern’s servers, which are the true endpoints for all traffic. This means that any content accessed is not tied to your IP address but is instead associated with Lantern’s servers.

Action Mode is designed to minimize the impact on your internet connection by keeping traffic low and manageable. To ensure this, we cap the number of simultaneous connections to five, which helps limit the amount of bandwidth used.

If you’re on a metered or capped connection, we recommend monitoring your usage to ensure Action Mode doesn’t impact your data plan.

Yes, the page must stay open for Action Mode to work, but you can freely navigate to other browser tabs without interrupting the connection. For a more convenient option, you can install our browser extension, which allows you to run Action Mode in the background without keeping the page open. Learn more here.

If you turn off Action Mode, any active connections will be seamlessly transferred to other volunteers in the network, ensuring uninterrupted access for users in censored regions.

Yes, Action Mode works on any device with a web browser. However, we recommend using the browser extension for the best experience. It’s easier to use, runs in the background, and allows you to maximize your impact by helping more people stay connected to the open internet.

When you use Action Mode, your IP address is visible to the device being used by the person you are helping. However, the websites or apps they access will not see your IP address. Instead, those websites and services only see Lantern’s servers, which act as the final connection point.

To explain further, just like your home has an address, everyone on the internet has an IP address. When censors block websites, it’s like a post office refusing to deliver mail to certain addresses. By using Action Mode, your connection acts as a temporary “forwarding address” to help someone access the content they need. The user connects to you, you pass the traffic to Lantern, and Lantern connects to the final website or app.

This setup ensures that your IP address isn’t linked to the content being accessed, and your personal browsing activity remains private.

Action Mode is developed by Brave New Software Project, Inc., a nonprofit that has been safeguarding internet freedom for nearly 15 years. As the creators of Lantern, a widely trusted censorship circumvention tool with over 150 million downloads, we are dedicated to providing fast, reliable, and secure access to the open internet for those who need it most.

There are many ways to help:

• Install our browser extension to make it easier to contribute. (Chrome / Firefox)
• Run Action Mode as often as you can to strengthen the network.
• Spread the word to friends and family and on social media.
• Embed Action Mode on your website to encourage others to join.
• Make a tax-deductible donation to support our efforts.