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Porn restrictions are leading to a VPN boom

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Re: Porn restrictions are leading to a VPN boom

#191
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That must be a US thing, over here in Europe, most people just use hotspots (or cellular data) instead. That was a thing even back in my day, when LTE availability was not a given and cellular packages were much less generous.

Tethering is idiot expensive in USA. Every provider will DPI and block it or throttle it. It's awful.

Tethering is free on my US T-Mobile account. I use it instead of crappy hotel Internet connections. Performance very much depends on your location, as the network is often shaky outside of cities.

Re: Porn restrictions are leading to a VPN boom

#192
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Configuring 1.1.1.1 is a great option for people outside the US whose countries are unable to pressure Cloudflare for information. A better option for those of us in the US is to run our own DNS resolvers. My DNS resolver runs on a little PFSense box that also has DNS blocking and a ton of other features.

Let's be realistic. Porn, the subject of this discussion, is not illegal in the US; this is about age verification laws that apply to the website operators, who then self-block users from particular states. No one is going after Cloudflare for this information as there is no crime committed by the user. Given Cloudflare's logging policy ( https://developers.cloudflare.com/1.1.1.1/privacy/public-dns... ) and data disc…

The US is not the subject of this thread...

> [a] couple in the South-Eastern very conservative Turkish city of Mersin

Re: Porn restrictions are leading to a VPN boom

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Overton window has shifted such that two adults agreeing to engage in sexual activity in front of a camera can be in any way considered “non-consensual”? Wild. Do you think adult actors agreeing to engage in sexual activity in front of a camera, but only because they have chosen to do that for a living when other viable employment alternatives were available, is also “non-consensual”?

> in any way considered “non-consensual”? Wild. Consensual means without coercion and being of sound mind. Let's put it this way, do you consider a quid-pro-quo scenario where a boss will promote or give a raise to a female employee if she has sex with him "consensual?" Obviously this is arguable in both directions (as we could say that this is a contract between two adults, but then again, prostitution is illegal).…

Another aspect is the prevalence of bullying against gays, once pictures are taken. If gays are sometimes killed even in France (Lyon, 2015), it’s worth wondering whether you want photos of yourself at 18, in a country that could evolve both ways for the rest of your life.

Re: Porn restrictions are leading to a VPN boom

#194
post #99

Hardening societal infra-structure against democratic governments collapsing back into autocracies. Good times.

But the kids!

gp means they're accidentally getting people used to using VPNs etc by poorly implementing bans on popular things.

Re: Porn restrictions are leading to a VPN boom

#195
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only the DNS lookups. Not the content of what you’re viewing over https. Everything after domain name is encrypted

The DNS lookup are often enough. You can try to claim you were shopping for new shoes on pornhub.com, but not many people will buy it

You could say you were learning math:

https://kotaku.com/on-pornhub-math-teacher-makes-his-mark-te...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28934711

Re: Porn restrictions are leading to a VPN boom

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DNS lookup are often enough. You can try to claim you were shopping for new shoes on pornhub.com, but not many people will buy it

There is no law against going to pornhub.com, the law is only concerned with dns blocking.

I feel like the type of places with heavy handed censorship are also not the type of places you want to go "well, actually..." to the government.

Re: Porn restrictions are leading to a VPN boom

#197

Anecdote: I stayed in the Airbnb of an (obviously gay) couple in the South-Eastern very conservative Turkish city of Mersin many years ago. The absolute joy they had when I showed them how to set up 1.1.1.1 on their Android TV, phones, and laptops… so they could watch unrestricted gay porn in their heavily censored and state-controlled slice of the World Wide Web… I still get a virtual greeting card from them once in…

> The absolute joy they had when I showed them how to set up 1.1.1.1 on their Android TV, phones, and laptops… so they could watch unrestricted gay porn in their heavily censored and state-controlled slice of the World Wide Web… I'd be very careful giving security advice to someone in that situation - in fact, I probably wouldn't do it, even though I am an experienced professional who knows more than most people in I…

If they aren’t technical enough to know your setup, they won’t know their current setup either. No big deal, keep it relaxed.

Re: Porn restrictions are leading to a VPN boom

#199
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know any similar hosts that attempt to provide shielded VMs?

Would Mullvad count? You can even pay anonymously by mailing cash.

Hm, I don't know if Mullvad uses shielded VMs for their infra. I guess it would be neat, but I'm more talking about privacy-oriented generic-hosting providers that provided shielded VMs.

Maybe it's just where my head is at, but I look at something like the GP's post and go "cool!" and then realize that such a property would be a prime example of a honeypot. Do I think there are individuals interested in offering low-margin "privacy" VPS services that accept crypto? Yes. But also, I suspect there's plenty of intelligence outfits that would spin up such a project as a fun side project to spy on guest VMs. :| Unbounded money goes a long way. And while I like to cosplay paranoia, I just have to assume that clients of such services are seeking anonymity for Reasons.

Shielded VMs + monero payments would at least move the bar up to "you need to be a target worth leaning on AMD/Intel for shielded-vm compromise".

Granted, I think you could also create infra architecture that allows you to treat these cannon-fodder, but I digress.

Re: Porn restrictions are leading to a VPN boom

#200
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Configuring 1.1.1.1 is a great option for people outside the US whose countries are unable to pressure Cloudflare for information. A better option for those of us in the US is to run our own DNS resolvers. My DNS resolver runs on a little PFSense box that also has DNS blocking and a ton of other features.

Let's be realistic. Porn, the subject of this discussion, is not illegal in the US; this is about age verification laws that apply to the website operators, who then self-block users from particular states. No one is going after Cloudflare for this information as there is no crime committed by the user. Given Cloudflare's logging policy ( https://developers.cloudflare.com/1.1.1.1/privacy/public-dns... ) and data disc…

Let’s be realistic - this is not about age verification but about restricting people from their rights to view a particular type of content because of how one religion feels about it. The age verification is just the smoke screen the Republicans use to take away your freedoms.
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