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The UK’s new age-gating rules are easy to bypass

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Re: The UK’s new age-gating rules are easy to bypass

#21

Post by mytailorisrich »

pr337h4m wrote: post #19

The most disturbing thing about this saga is that websites that have no physical/legal/business presence in the UK are proactively geoblocking UK-origin IPs. Censorious governments have always been a thing since the beginning of the internet. Websites (especially non-corporate ones like 4chan or R34) preemptively surrendering to a foreign government that has no jurisdiction over them is what's new.

This is because nowadays everything has to be zero-risk and "over-lawyered."

We have seen the same with the GDPR and now also with the UK Internet Safety Act.

Re: The UK’s new age-gating rules are easy to bypass

#22

Post by SXX »

monooso wrote: post #5
SXX wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They know what they doing exactly. But they now have a reason to require age and ID checks to buy VPN. Then ban payments to VPNs that don't follow said regulation. You'll see.

You greatly overestimate our legislators. Of course, they may react in the way you described, but I sincerely doubt we're witnessing some great master plan.

UK is literally the only country except for China that pushed to disable Apple E2E encryption country-wide. It doesn't matter how secure Avanced Data Protection is and how trustworthy is Apple. Just think on it.

Also UK had law for years that can land you in prison for not providing decryption keys for data that you supposedly encrypyted. It's not actively used, but it's there.

So nope, there plenty of UK politicians from both parties that will happily push something that will invade your privacy. And really no one who push against it.

Re: The UK’s new age-gating rules are easy to bypass

#23

Post by pr337h4m »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #21
pr337h4m wrote: post #19

The most disturbing thing about this saga is that websites that have no physical/legal/business presence in the UK are proactively geoblocking UK-origin IPs. Censorious governments have always been a thing since the beginning of the internet. Websites (especially non-corporate ones like 4chan or R34) preemptively surrendering to a foreign government that has no jurisdiction over them is what's new.

This is because nowadays everything has to be zero-risk and "over-lawyered." We have seen the same with the GDPR and now also with the UK Internet Safety Act.

There is absolutely zero risk as long as you stay out of the UK. Even if you do travel to the UK, there is no practical risk for the foreseeable future.

Re: The UK’s new age-gating rules are easy to bypass

#24

Post by thomascountz »

jayceedenton wrote: post #14

Age limits on buying cigarettes are easily thwarted by finding a corner shop that needs the sale and will sell to kids. Height restrictions on fairground rides are easily thwarted by putting bits of wood in your shoes. None of this matters. The point is that this kind of control will drastically reduce under 18s consuming content that they shouldn't. We don't need the all of society's controls to be flawless.

Without co-opting the loaded notion of what we mean by "shouldn't," I do agree that, at a certain point, manipulating controls to feather through the margins and outliers has diminishing positive returns and increasing negative ones.

Re: The UK’s new age-gating rules are easy to bypass

#25

Post by dns_snek »

gennarro wrote: post #4

Except paying the vpn requires a credit card that does the same verification check so it’s not thwarting the rule at all.

Kids aren't going to pay for a VPN, even if they had the option to. They're going to Google "Free VPN" and download the first option which will probably add their device into a "UK residential proxy" botnet. Everyone is getting something out of it, the state of UK cybersecurity is weakened further, and no money is changing hands, good luck stopping that.

Re: The UK’s new age-gating rules are easy to bypass

#27

Post by michaelt »

SXX wrote: post #3
solids wrote: post #2

As expected, bureaucrats completely out of touch with current technology producing regulations that are out of touch with current technology

They know what they doing exactly. But they now have a reason to require age and ID checks to buy VPN. Then ban payments to VPNs that don't follow said regulation. You'll see.

Well, it all depends if the politicians actually care if this works.

You see, this bill was passed in 2023, under a Conservative government; then a Labour government was elected in 2024, before the bill came into force.

A nice little time bomb, set by the outgoing government - impractical and illiberal, but labelled all over with 'children' and 'cyber-bullying' and 'violent pornography'

So if the Labour government keeps the legislation, they look like heavy-handed censors silencing LGBT voices and local hobby/community forums, yet if they repeal the legislation you can criticise them for wanting children to have access to violent porn.

A Labour politician who thought this was shitty legislation, but who didn't think going on record as a pro-pornography voice would help his or her re-election prospects, might be entirely happy for age checks to be easy to bypass.

Re: The UK’s new age-gating rules are easy to bypass

#28

Post by RansomStark »

SXX wrote: post #22
monooso wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You greatly overestimate our legislators. Of course, they may react in the way you described, but I sincerely doubt we're witnessing some great master plan.

UK is literally the only country except for China that pushed to disable Apple E2E encryption country-wide. It doesn't matter how secure Avanced Data Protection is and how trustworthy is Apple. Just think on it. Also UK had law for years that can land you in prison for not providing decryption keys for data that you supposedly encrypyted. It's not actively used, but it's there. So nope, there plenty of UK politicians…

> Also UK had law for years that can land you in prison for not providing decryption keys for data that you supposedly encrypted. It's not actively used, but it's there.

It is actively used, it's just most people fold and hand over the data [0][1][2].

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-11479831 [1] https://www.pinsentmasons.com/out-law/news/court-of-appeal-o... [2] https://news.sophos.com/en-us/2017/09/27/campaigner-who-refu...

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