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UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs

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Re: UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs

#41

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

thefz wrote: post #11

What if I rent a cheap VPS overseas and wireguard my traffic to that?

I mean it's still a Virtual Private network between you and the VPS (which is rented by VPS provider)

So technically if you are from UK, they might come at your VPS provider if they find that you use them as a VPN (law's kinda vague from what I can gather)

Your VPS provider wouldn't really protect your privacy for 4 $ so a snitch.

My point which fucking scares me if I were a UK citizen is that they just have to do it once to scare you to your guts.

Maybe I am paranoid but I couldn't see this shit happen 2-3 years ago & UK is atleast moving at a very dystopian rate and I am not sure if other countries might move in similar direction too if UK experiment turns out to be helpful to the people in power or helps in curbing out protests/real change in any capacity.

I know the law hasn't passed but chances are unless osmething very unlikley happens, its gonna get passed

What's up with democracies trying to imprison their own citizens in such sense, whether digitally or in person. Some countries feel like prisons rather than free land now.

These were the best benefits of democracies over authoritarianism.

I genuinely question with such points if democracy actually just becomes a dual party authoritarianism. Sure people vote but just scare them for real change just once. If a person speaks online, even if they use a VPN, just catch one extreme and scare the moderates from even ever saying something different than what govt says

Say it with me, 2+2=5 (1984 reference)

Re: UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs

#42

Post by FrostViper8 »

wlkr wrote: post #24

I'm very interested to see how some VPN providers react to this. For a zero logs VPN provider, if such a thing can really exist, how big of a problem is this? Presumably many customers pay with a debit/credit card already so there's some PII on file? Usage remains the same? Surely savvy people can just use their existing VPN to buy a VPN from outside the UK. Of course, we're sliding quite rapidly down that slippery s…

> Presumably many customers pay with a debit/credit card already so there's some PII on file?

Yes. But I think most of the zero logs providers will remove the identifiable payments details after a certain about of time. e.g. Mullvad have a specific policy relating to what is stored and retention time (I am not affiliated with Mullvad, I just use their service).

https://mullvad.net/en/help/no-logging-data-policy#payments

> Surely savvy people can just use their existing VPN to buy a VPN from outside the UK.

Or you can use Tor. I will just use a VPN that lets me pay with Monero or some other crypto currency. None of this will stop savvy people.

Re: UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs

#44

Post by nindalf »

valleyer wrote: post #38
pjc50 wrote: post #34

Same article also says the bill includes a ban on social media for users under 16, like Australia. Pretty dramatic change. Meanwhile the government and official accounts continue to use X even as they're trying to ban it. Mixed messaging. Lead proponent of the VPN ban: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Nash,_Baron_Nash ; he's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_for_Policy_Studies again, the dead hand of Thatcherism…

It drives me nuts that local governments in the US continue to use Twitter/X to disseminate communications, despite having perfectly good web sites of their own.

Those websites aren't easy to update. I have a website of my own too, and even though I've set it up to be as painless as possible, it's always going to be easier for me to open a social media app and post.

Now imagine that the local government has a website that can only be changed by contacting a web developer, who takes 1-2 business days to reply. It might not be as bad as that, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's the ballpark.

Re: UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs

#45

Post by RansomStark »

unglaublich wrote: post #25

What societal "harm" is the UK actually trying to reduce with this age verification? It almost feels like the amount of effort they're putting into this is out of balance with the actual harm.

political dissent. Uncomfortable truths. Any speech that does not align with the official narrative.

A Labour MP foolish attended a GB News show and when pushed admitted that the Online Safety Act was also about identifying speech by adults [0].

Sorry about the quality of the link, but the video is there (higher quality is available on X) and its not like the paragon of truth that is the BBC reported on this.

https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/uk-government...

Re: UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs

#46

Post by phatfish »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #22

This is very bad news because I have been in contact with low cost providers (lowendtalk) and the community & even they usually end up renting etc. from datacenters and they usually would have name as well So theoretically, suppose I have a vpn company on A) either such lowend niche providers who might support let's say my mission or we are aligned or B) the hyperscalers or large companies. Now I am 99% sure that lar…

You are over thinking. This is to enforce age restrictions online which parents are overwhelmingly in favour of.

Make the friction high enough for evading age restrictions and it will stop most kids. Not all but most. Same as most shops stop under age kids buying alcohol and most cinemas enforce age ratings.

If you want to roll your own VPN go ahead.

As far as the "dystopian" state of the UK goes. Even if the UK was a "distopia" the internet won't save you, even though people of a certain age like to think they can stop an authoritarian government from their keyboard. Take the US as a recent example, the bastion of free speech, but US citizens are being murdered by a government organisation. Posting memes from your VPN won't help.

Re: UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs

#47

Post by hexbin010 »

embedding-shape wrote: post #31
aranw wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've written to my MP several times about this. Each response just repeats the same talking points about safety whilst completely missing the underlying technical issues and consequences.

I've been met with that kind of stone walling before too, you know what eventually worked to actually turn the position of a local councilwoman? Going to her office and demand to speak with her, then sitting down, listening and having a conversation with her. Turns out that most of the emails "she" wrote to me was written by an assistant "to save her time" and she weren't aware of the points I was trying to bring up.…

Councillors have a totally different role though and aren't involved in creating legislation

Re: UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs

#48

Post by iamcalledrob »

Where does this end? Turtles all the way down.

If VPNs require age verification, then people will shift to running a VPN on a cheap VPS. Probably via a popular single-click setup script.

Or people will just get drawn to more seedy providers that do no KYC or have ulterior motives. If I was Russia, I'd consider operating a free VPN or VPS service that MITMs the traffic.

Re: UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs

#49

Post by badgersnake »

aranw wrote: post #29
jimnotgym wrote: post #9

Just for clarification. House of Lords amendments do not have to be accepted by the House of Commons and may not make it into law. If you do not agree with an amendment then write to your MP, write to the ministers concerned. If you do not tell them your concerns they will not know. You can ask for an appointment with your MP. You can ask for an appointment with ministers. Better still you can form an advocacy group…

I've written to my MP several times about this. Each response just repeats the same talking points about safety whilst completely missing the underlying technical issues and consequences.

Same, my MP is clueless. They won’t listen to the experts. This is what he said:

The UK has a strong tradition of safeguarding privacy while ensuring that appropriate action can be taken against criminals, such as child sexual abusers and terrorists. I firmly believe that privacy and security are not mutually exclusive—we can and must have both. The Investigatory Powers Act governs how and when data can be requested by law enforcement and other relevant agencies. It includes robust safeguards and independent oversight to protect privacy, ensuring that data is accessed only in exceptional cases and only when necessary and proportionate. The suggestion that cybersecurity and access to data by law enforcement are at odds is false. It is possible for online platforms to have strong cybersecurity measures whilst also ensuring that criminal activities can be detected.

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