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VPN ban update for UK households as government looks at 'age-gate'

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Re: VPN ban update for UK households as government looks at 'age-gate'

#181

Post by subscribed »

oliwarner wrote: post #135
crims0n wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is really disheartening to see the sentiment around privacy erode like this. Fifteen or even ten years ago this would have been unanimously and vehemently opposed, but now it is somehow up for debate?

Social media got worse. We've had time to witness the damage of a dopamine-doomscroll. I personally know children who've posted too much, and children who've been solicited directly by adults, both to try and meet and for nudes. And we've seen the complete lack of positive action from platforms. Roblox is full of paedophiles and Grok was letting you nudify your classmates just a few months ago. These places aren't su…

You want age checking, you want ids .

Re: VPN ban update for UK households as government looks at 'age-gate'

#182

Post by mjhay »

oliwarner wrote: post #154
sylos wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they should get the pedos out of the government instead of a foolish attempt at restricting and harming everyone else? It's not ever going to protect or make children safer. It never was.

Why doesn't it make children safer? I'm trying to discuss this in good faith but that wasn't even an argument. A bland accusation wearing a tin foil hat.

The onus is you to show it makes children safer - you’re the one advocating these privacy-harming rules.

Re: VPN ban update for UK households as government looks at 'age-gate'

#184

Post by padjo »

subscribed wrote: post #167
nly wrote: post #45

I've been using a VPN in the UK on my laptop and phone exclusively for 20 years, and the state has been working with ISPs to make "connection records" for most of that time. On mobile a VPN isn't always effective in avoid geoblocks. Some apps are able to determine I'm in the UK and still ask for ID - reddit is one for example, if you stumble on to an adult subreddit. Using the web interface avoids this. The UK has al…

On the mobile apps can check your SIMs country code. This is how bluesky knows the UK users (they used to use IP, not anymore)

In retrospect native apps were a terrible idea. I try to use web apps as much as possible.

Re: VPN ban update for UK households as government looks at 'age-gate'

#185

Post by satvikpendem »

crims0n wrote: post #101
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #89

In Russia, they claimed that new measures to block websites are necessary to protect the children online. Of course, they immediately used these new capabilities to block opposition websites and sources critical of the government. Now, seeing many European governments tirelessly push for these new measures to protect the children , I'm pretty sure that the children are finally going to be safe online.

It is really disheartening to see the sentiment around privacy erode like this. Fifteen or even ten years ago this would have been unanimously and vehemently opposed, but now it is somehow up for debate?

Opposed, yeah right. People don't care back then just as they don't now. Only small groups of technical users like us care.

Re: VPN ban update for UK households as government looks at 'age-gate'

#186

Post by sandworm101 »

Don't panic. These debates are nothing new. Encryption and obfuscation tech comes up every ten years or so. People scream and, in the end, nothing changes.

One upon a time, encryption math was regulated as a munition and the act of sharing open source software was tantamount to weapon smuggling. Once upon a time, VPNs were being banned by credit card companies. Part of the rise of bitcoin was the idea that you would need it for services like VPNs that credit card companies refused to service. Today, VPNs are openly advertised as piracy tools for getting around media geo-restrictions. Once upon a time, ISPs throttled torrents and so torrents become encrypted. Once upon a time DNS was to be poisoned in order to block filesharing websites (see COICA and PROTECT IP acts). All those efforts also came to nothing. These too will die.

Re: VPN ban update for UK households as government looks at 'age-gate'

#187

Post by lambdaone »

I'm very much in favour of blocking children from social media - it's an absolutely vile cesspit of cognitive addiction, bullying and social (and potential sexual) abuse. But none of it requires a mass-surveillance network to be put in place.

Just for one example; it would be trivial for Apple and Google to put age estimation on my phone, verify it on opening the web browser and provide a zero-knowledge proof of age to websites in a way that does not reveal my identity. All the infrastructure is already there, and it's relatively trivial to turn it on. The downside is that this will only work for people who are older than about 25 because of the uncertainty of face-to-age recognition, but it would be a start.

Another way to do it is for my bank, who know my age already, providing a similar credential that I can feed into the zero-knowledge proof engine on the phone.

This was all done properly for the covid tracking apps, at a time when the phone providers actually wanted to do tracking with anonymity - this is a similar problem, and it's easily cracked by technical means.

And you don't even need zero knowledge proofs if you perform on-device content detection - turn it on for kids, keep it off for adults. Modern phones have more than enough TPU capacity to do this.

But none of the actual implementations I've seen are truly anonymizing, and they all rely on trusting some really dodgy companies with your identity and browsing habits. Yes, the more respectable ones have security and privacy policies that are audited, but will they always? The cynical answer is "no", because history shows that someone will always do something sooner or later if (a) it makes money, and (b) they can get away with it.

Everything I see suggests that the desire for mass surveillance is the driver, and the "protect the children" front on this is a strategem by the people who are really driving this from behind the curtain. There are huge amounts of money to be made by capturing verifiable, blackmailable, personal data, and this is a magic money fountain for those who will be able to mine it.

Re: VPN ban update for UK households as government looks at 'age-gate'

#189

Post by prima-facie »

bjackman wrote: post #109
iLoveOncall wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On mobile VPN isn't always effective in avoid geoblocks. Some apps are able to determine I'm in the UK and still ask for ID - reddit is one for example, if you stumble on to an adult subreddit. I've never had this issue (using Private Internet Access on iOS).

I'm a Brit living abroad, when I visit the UK I use a Tailscale network with an exit node at my home, and yeah this always seems to work for me. Going the other way around to try and watch British TV I used to find with a normal hosted VPN services could still figure out I wasn't in the country, but now I have a Tailscale exit node at my mum's place in the UK it always works fine. So I suspect it all comes down to th…

Commercial VPNs publish their exit nodes IPs online. There are services like ipinfo.io which can accurately determine if you are using a known VPN service.

Re: VPN ban update for UK households as government looks at 'age-gate'

#190

Post by _el3m3n7 »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #89

In Russia, they claimed that new measures to block websites are necessary to protect the children online. Of course, they immediately used these new capabilities to block opposition websites and sources critical of the government. Now, seeing many European governments tirelessly push for these new measures to protect the children , I'm pretty sure that the children are finally going to be safe online.

If you are talking about the recent blockades of VPNs, the Russians made it pretty clear that they did not want western information sources inside the country. I am not sure it was ever in the guise of protecting the children
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