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SoundCloud has banned VPN access

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Re: SoundCloud has banned VPN access

#121

Post by butlike »

vpShane wrote: post #53

Should be interesting to see how the internet blocks those of us who don't want to be fingerprinted, ID'd, or reveal our home IP addresses. YouTube already blocks embeds to login and prove I'm not a bot, funnily it doesn't work and embeds never play. Reddit will block me unless I'm signed in which I don't mind too much, but the daily beast and many others block me which is a shame because I'm a real human being using…

In the nicest way possible: who cares? So "they" know my vile pornographic proclivities, my daily commute, and probably what color my poop was this morning. Then what? I get embarassed?

Snowden showed the NSA has taps upstream, so in my book: that's over. I'm fairly convinced if your company reaches a size where it could potentially be a national security threat, the government comes knocking (Facebook, Apple, Twitter, etc.), so that seems like it's over. You have the AI companies scraping god knows what. And, I imagine most countries have corollaries.

Really, all the bad actors I'd encounter in my daily travels would be ones who want to steal money from me. That's a simple ideology. I can handle that. My identity gets stolen, my bank account...there's multiple levels of billion dollar companies with vested interest in me not losing faith in "the system," so I'm not worried about it really.

If a company wants to associate my phone number to glean all my purchases forever in order to target tailored ads to me, fine. Again, it's in the spirit of taking my money, which is a simple ideology.

If the neighbors want to snoop on my traffic, hats off to them for having the capacity to live two lives: both theirs, and mine after they figure out my day-to-day dealings. Doubt they have time to do much about it. Hard enough to live one life in 24 hours.

If the government wants to try and keep tabs on everything to see who's making ICBMs and who isn't, or whatever else they want to do, that's their prerogative but it seems like a complex goal that doesn't affect me.

Re: SoundCloud has banned VPN access

#122

Post by paulddraper »

jijijijij wrote: post #116
socalgal2 wrote: post #101

I keep wishing “privacy” company, Apple, would release a VPN such that no business would be able to block it as they’d lose too many customers

Unless Apple would make an anonymizing VPN connection mandatory, I don't see any difference to the situation as is. As long as people can be pressured to turn off the VPN, nobody loses any customers. Additionally, I don't think paying customers are the target, since they usually provide identifying information anyway.

It's a matter of numbers.

If 20% of people are using VPNs, blocking them is going to be a double-digit hit.

Re: SoundCloud has banned VPN access

#124

Post by kstrauser »

blibble wrote: post #96
ranger_danger wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will also cause problems with anyone that happens to (even accidentally/unknowingly) use apps that integrate services from companies such as BrightData/Luminati/HolaVPN/etc. where they sell idle time on your device/connection to their VPN/proxy customers. The legitimate end-user will then no longer be able to use e.g. SoundCloud.

I fail to see the problem if people that allow their internet connection used by scammers/AI crawlers are banned from every service

I’m with you on this one. Some of my projects are flooded with sus traffic from Brazil. I don’t believe there are a million eager Brazilian hackers targeting me in particular. It’s pretty clear from analysis that they’re all residential hosts running proxies, knowingly or otherwise.

The more concise word for this is “botnet”. Computers participating in one should be quarantined until they stop.

Re: SoundCloud has banned VPN access

#125

Post by lvl155 »

I am so sick of these IP blocks. Same thing in Discord where a lot of servers deploy third-rate services like Double Counter that’s effectively a malware host. There’s nothing wrong with using VPN. I don’t want my IP exposed when my ISP doesn’t allow me to freely change it like they used to even a couple of years ago.

Re: SoundCloud has banned VPN access

#126

Post by jijijijij »

delusional wrote: post #36
oefrha wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The exhausting "well actually" masks a corrosive argument, that if you can't enforce the rules in a rigid and rigorous fashion, the rule is fiat. It's not that he doesn't know the difference. He's making the argument that since there's no _technical_ difference there can be no legal difference.

Yeah, it's an ignorant and arrogant take on the legal system.

In most places the law is exercised pragmatically, interpreted by presumed intention. That's why legal precedent is important. You likely won't convince any judge being anal about the wording (maybe if the law gets applied for the first time). You can derail anything semantically. Furthermore, despite apparent belief, laws are frequently formulated in such a way that a particular wider term is extended to help interpretation. Eg. "It is prohibited to use a VPN in a way capable and intended to obscure one's physical internet access point identification". (Not a lawyer, not a native speaker, don't get anal with this wording, either.) I very much doubt any legally binding document would even use the term 'VPN' primarily to describe the technical means for anonymization, but rather describe it functionally.

Re: SoundCloud has banned VPN access

#127

Post by majorchord »

blibble wrote: post #96
ranger_danger wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will also cause problems with anyone that happens to (even accidentally/unknowingly) use apps that integrate services from companies such as BrightData/Luminati/HolaVPN/etc. where they sell idle time on your device/connection to their VPN/proxy customers. The legitimate end-user will then no longer be able to use e.g. SoundCloud.

I fail to see the problem if people that allow their internet connection used by scammers/AI crawlers are banned from every service

> unknowingly

Often times random shovelware apps will have these proxy SDKs embedded in them, and the only mention of it being part of the software is buried in some long ToS that nobody reads.

Re: SoundCloud has banned VPN access

#129

Post by jihadjihad »

rendaw wrote: post #73
danpalmer wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legislation. If a country requires age verification, identity verification, moderation, etc, it's easy enough to either block that traffic or enforce the local laws. However users can easily circumvent this with a VPN. For some countries, this traffic is still in scope, and so the only real way to prevent it is to block or impose the restrictions on all VPN users. Could also be spam/abuse prevention. Credential stuff…

Yeah, but age verification for _music_?

Were you around in the 90s? Remember when Marilyn Manson was blamed for Columbine?

Re: SoundCloud has banned VPN access

#130

Post by GoblinSlayer »

blibble wrote: post #96
ranger_danger wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will also cause problems with anyone that happens to (even accidentally/unknowingly) use apps that integrate services from companies such as BrightData/Luminati/HolaVPN/etc. where they sell idle time on your device/connection to their VPN/proxy customers. The legitimate end-user will then no longer be able to use e.g. SoundCloud.

I fail to see the problem if people that allow their internet connection used by scammers/AI crawlers are banned from every service

You might want to learn how internets work today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_address_translation
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