Egypt's website blocking began on 24 May 2017, when 21 news sites were blocked at once with no legal basis given. By November 2020 the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies counted at least 628 blocked sites, 394 of them VPN and proxy services, with independent outlets such as Mada Masr among the news sites. The blocking continues: Freedom House reports that the news site Cairo 24 was blocked in November 2024 and the Brussels-based outlet Zawia3 in February 2025.
Since 2018 the blocking has a legal basis. The Anti-Cyber and Information Technology Crimes Law (Law 175 of 2018) lets investigators, and the security services through the telecom regulator, order a website blocked when they consider its content a crime or a threat to national security or the economy. The same law makes providers keep data that identifies each user, including IP addresses, devices and connection records, for 180 days. A media law passed the same year treats social media accounts with 5,000 or more followers like media outlets.
VPNs are a target too. WireGuard was added to Egypt's block list in 2021, and from August 2022 the authorities blocked PPTP and L2TP connections, then OpenVPN from October 2022, using deep packet inspection to identify the traffic. Internet calling has been restricted for years: in late 2024 the telecom regulator said it planned to lift the ban on VoIP services such as WhatsApp and Viber calls, but Freedom House found it still in force at the end of May 2025, with several calling services unreachable.
GhostShield has no server in Egypt; Dubai and Milan are the nearest locations. It runs standard WireGuard without obfuscation, so on an Egyptian connection that blocks WireGuard it will not connect. The 7-day free trial (a card is required) is the way to check your own connection before paying.
International Privacy Standards
Internet freedom varies significantly by country. Organizations like Freedom House track global internet freedom annually, while the EU's GDPR has set new standards for data protection worldwide. Reporters Without Borders monitors press freedom and digital access restrictions globally.
A VPN helps you maintain consistent privacy protections regardless of which country you're browsing from, ensuring your data stays encrypted and your activity stays private.
The privacy landscape in Egypt
The main risk is legal rather than technical. Freedom House rates Egypt's internet Not Free, 28 out of 100 in its 2025 report, and records more than 100 people detained in mid-2024, during weeks of power cuts, after using social media to call for protests. A VPN hides what you browse from the provider; it does nothing for what you post under your own name.
Providers must keep identifying data, IP addresses and connection records for every user for 180 days, and face fines of EGP 5 to 10 million if they do not. With a VPN on, that record shows a connection to the VPN server rather than the sites you visit.
The everyday risks are the usual ones on shared networks in hotels, airports and cafes. The WireGuard tunnel takes the network out of the picture; it does not stop a convincing fake login page.
Top reasons people use a VPN in Egypt
Residents use a VPN to reach blocked news sites and to keep their browsing out of the records providers must keep for 180 days. Where the tunnel connects, it also carries internet calls, because the network sees only encrypted traffic to the server and cannot single out the calling app.
Visitors and expatriates use it on hotel, airport and cafe Wi-Fi, and connect to a server in their own country for home banking and streaming catalogues, where GhostShield has one.
Egyptians abroad cannot get an Egyptian address from GhostShield, because there is no server in the country. Services that only accept Egyptian addresses will not see one through Dubai or Milan.
Why most VPNs stop working in Egypt
Egypt does not only block VPN websites; it filters the protocols. WireGuard was added to the block list in 2021. Every WireGuard connection opens with a 148-byte handshake packet with a fixed pattern, answered by a 92-byte one, and the filter matches those packets without decrypting anything, according to NT Kernel, a developer of WireGuard client software. Users of Cloudflare WARP+ and Mullvad were among those affected. A workaround that sent only the handshake packets through a proxy had stopped working by May 2024, NT Kernel reported.
From August 2022 the authorities also blocked PPTP and L2TP connections, and from October 2022 OpenVPN, using deep packet inspection to identify and slow the traffic and blocking the ports OpenVPN normally uses, according to the digital rights group SMEX.
GhostShield uses standard WireGuard with no obfuscation, so where WireGuard is blocked it will not connect. Check it on your own network during the 7-day trial and cancel if it does not work.