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UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs

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121–130 of 213 posts

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

#121
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should be a smartphone ban, which would actually be enforceable.

How? Parents would give smartphones to their kids.

That's like saying parents would give meth to their kids. Make the crime equivalent and you'll find they won't, or if they do, they won't have their kids for long.

Parents are obviously far too stupid to do what's in their children's best interests re social media and smart phones. That plus the general indifference most parents have to this kind of thing mandates state interference. Banning social media for them specifically is a pain for everyone involved, just ban the phones - simple.

How is it more enforceable? It seems far more clear cut than 'little kimmy has an iphone 74++ pro but can't have snapchat' or whatever stupid app predators are using in year X. If little kimmy has an iphone 74++ pro it's getting confiscated and her parents fined at a minimum, that should make them strongly re-consider in future.

I think desktop computer use under some level of parental supervision is fine, but smartphones are not appropriate for kids at any level. I can't see any benefit whatsoever to under 18's possessing one.

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

#122

They REALLY want people to become more tech-savvy and to learn how to create their own VPNs using cheap VMs instances from __INSERT_CLOUD_PROVIDER_HERE__, don't they?

How many cloud providers accept fully anonymous cash payments?

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

#123
post #11

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

As long as you don't offer it for others in exchange for money, it isn't a service and not what's covered here.

Untrue. F.O.C. is.not excempt. See https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3909/stages/20215/amendmen...

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

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does big tech help the parents? Can I set the age of the child in the phone user account and then the browser will report the age to the websites and the nice websites will aknowledge it and deny minors to watch adult content? No big tech and browser makers did not put their hurds of developers to handle this and forced the governments to try more retarded solutions. This big OSes should have a super easy activation…

You can block the entire internet and whitelist specific domains. There's multiple ways of doing this, from router parental controls, specific OS tools in iOS/Android, Windows, as well as apps specific to it, and all it takes is for a parent to care enough to make a simple Google or Youtube search and learn if they don't know, and don't even know to know that they should care in the first place. The failure here is t…

In the UK all mobile phones default to no adult content on the mobile networks, if you want to access adult content you need to request it with the mobile network provider. They could have gone the same route with consumer internet access. Most ISP supplied routers support content blocking, it could have been turned on by default with a simple update pushed by the ISP.

Kids here in the UK get educated about online safety in school, schools have sessions for parents covering this stuff too. My own kids have had age appropriate internet access all their lives, its not been difficult to control it, we have had the tools and knowledge for years.

This stuff really isn't about child safety in my opinion.

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

#125

Can we somehow get age verification without IDs? Age verification itself is OK as an idea. I’m happy to show ID to buy alcohol at the store… but the store clerk doesn’t take a photo of that ID and store it in logs somewhere forever. Can we please get a law where kids won’t just take their parents’ IDs and upload them to random places?

You might like the Digital ID scheme. It uses Zero Knowledge Proofs, so that one of your 'IDs' could be a simple 'Is over 18' ZKP, without involving your name or anything other detail. These are not tracked by government or possible to associate with your wider identity. This is one of the examples listed in the framework docs. > "Unlike with a physical document, when using a digital identity, you can limit the amoun…

While great on paper, zero-knowledge-proof based systems unfortunately have a fatal flaw. Due to the fully anonymous nature of verification tokens, implementations must have safeguards in place to prevent users from intercepting them and passing them onto someone else; in practice, this will likely be accomplished by making both the authenticator and the target service mobile apps that rely on device integrity APIs. This would ultimately result in the same accessibility issues that currently plague the banking industry, where it is no longer possible to own a bank account in most countries without an unmodified, up-to-date phone and an Apple or Google account that did not get banned for redeeming a gift card.

Furthermore, if implementers are going to be required to verify users per-session rather than only once during signup, such a measure would end up killing desktop Linux (if not desktop PCs as a whole) by making it impossible for any non-locked-down platform to access the vast majority of the web.

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

#126
post #19
post #11

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

then you are not using any vpn service marketed or provided in the UK . if you were to sell access to your VPS to others then you would have to do age verifications on them maybe. maybe it is still illegal, IDK, bu likely due to other laws (eg a generic "it is illegal to use workaround for X")

> then you are not using any vpn service marketed or provided in the UK.

Irrelevent. See:

must apply the child VPN prohibition to the provider of any relevant VPN service which is, or is likely to be—

(i) offered or marketed to *persons in the* United Kingdom;

(ii) provided to a significant number of persons

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

#127
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> political dissent. Uncomfortable truths. Any speech that does not align with the official narrative. No, this age verification is not against that.

No, the age verification doesn't, the linking of adult profiles to real human people, which is required to enable the age verification is. Did you watch the linked video? There's an MP admitting they are doing this

I appreciate the retraction. Thanks.

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

#128
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not an interception. It is not a condition on either party. It does not require either party to have the other's ID. It is no more than a requirement on the service provider.

> It does not require either party to have the other's ID. Sure but that's literally not my point. It's still an interception because the govt is still decided who can communicate (essentially) or not. You cannot communicate with a vps provider if they don't have your ID and this condition being forced as a requirement otherwise the UK govt.s gonna jail and sue into literal millions is much akin to an interception in…

It literally is your point "enforcing a condition for one party to have Id of other for age verification etc".

As for the provider, there is not prhibition on communicating with him, with or without ID. Just on him providing service to other than verifed adults.

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

#129

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:/…

It takes just a few seconds to see that it's a random backbencher who is not in the government. We have a whole range of MPs, and some of them sometimes talk about things they have no idea about. The website you're citing is little more than propaganda, since it explicitly makes it seem like the MP has any connection to the government.

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

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does big tech help the parents? Can I set the age of the child in the phone user account and then the browser will report the age to the websites and the nice websites will aknowledge it and deny minors to watch adult content? No big tech and browser makers did not put their hurds of developers to handle this and forced the governments to try more retarded solutions. This big OSes should have a super easy activation…

This makes the tech companies the decision makers over what is suitable content for children. But this has many problems. A big example is that some people are more open about sex than others. I'm reminded of a scene in an anime of a father in a bath with his daughters, normal in many cultures, deemed perverted by many (particularly christian US residents). Also here in the the Netherlands, a pretty open society when…

>This makes the tech companies the decision makers over what is suitable content for children.

No, the big tech just needs to 1 ensure that at the OS setup birthday is read, then if OS is queried about the user age range to answer

2 apps and websites will not decide anything, they will follow the local laws and on top of those they can addf their own moral or PR filters.

Then if you have a blog or big webiste and you care about the laws or users or the PR you then setup your server to ject say under 13 from your blog.

I am not a big tam of obscenely paid developers and managers so I bet they can improve on this idea or they can milk the ads until the government will pass retarded laws

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