281–290 of 386 posts
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Yeah the being asked for an email or phone for free wifi option is completely different from the “I can MITM all your web requests” which is what needs a VPN. I usually give a fake email or phone number to get free wifi anyway.
Fuck@off.com tends to work but I’ve sometimes had portals give refuse that as a “fake”, same with bob@bob.com. Billg@microsoft.com is my fallback.
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VPNS need money to operate, and money businesses have anchors in the real, physical, brick-and-mortar world, which is ultimately under control of the British police, with their extendable batons and prison bars. If you make money by laying asphalt on British streets and get paid in British pounds, there's no way for you to pay an internet business in Malta if the British government doesn't want you to. Sure, there's…
A internet based company in many countries can not be held to any law because the UK aren't a fan. Companies don't need to collect cash in the UK to run a business worldwide.
Eventually the bans will be widespread enough that VPNs become near meaningless. You won't be able to bypass streaming region locks, or access regional discounts. You won't be able to ensure E2EE privacy in some other region because all the major ones will be cracked down.
The only way forward will be running VPNs out of poorer countries, countries with less telecommunication restrictions, etc. Although this will come at the cost of latency. 100-200ms to connect to a Tajikistan VPN. From my experience, even Google Searches and YouTube playback become sluggish at 100ms+, the modern web has 1000 .js files executing every time a page loads and the 100ms delay just screws everything up. It's like browsing the web on a PS3 in 2026.
Once people start switching to Guatemalan VPNs, the Government will ban "manipulating networking routing" at the backhaul and ISP levels. You will not be able to adjust routing, it will become illegal. Before anyone says "you can't do that, it won't work", I was told the same thing when I said they'd ban VPNs, yet here we are.
One step at a time to erode privacy, security and freedom. Once you jump up a level, you cannot comprehend a world below that level. The mega restrictions of tomorrow are normalized in the new world.
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The technology bit doesn't really matter though. The real problem is that the legislation would bring the power to prosecute people who use them or use it against them. The security services aren't having any of that shit because it puts their position at risk both from the front-facing side and recommendations and guidance issued and from their own operations.
The power to prosecute and the actual ability to prosecute are two different things. They currently can't prosecute CSAM offences nor piracy due to capacity. It won't happen.
The reality is, VPNs help people learn, have freedoms and explore alternative world views. This is a direct "harm" to the Governments, because they have trouble dictating the narrative.
User to Mozilla: Cannot read your statement with a variant of your own browser because you have it "protected" by an internet gatekeeper.
I am using a fork of Firefox and it works perfectly fine.
> Rather than age-gating technologies like VPNs, we believe that regulators should address the root causes of online harm by holding platforms to account Honest question: if you tell Pornhub "now you will be fined heavily if you let 10-year old kids access porn", won't Pornhub implement some kind of age verification? How else would the platform "address the root cause"?
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Times would be tough if we could only express thoughts noone thought before.
No, it's trite and useless. You don't need to refer to popular literature to talk about authoritarianism, there are plenty of examples in real life.
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The very same office of the eSafety commissioner that is enforcing age verification for social media. https://www.esafety.gov.au/newsroom/blogs/social-media-minim...
Yes. Isn’t effective regulation of dangerous products wonderful.
Apart from those things, the Australian government did an excellent job.
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The very same office of the eSafety commissioner that is enforcing age verification for social media. https://www.esafety.gov.au/newsroom/blogs/social-media-minim...
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If it was reasonable it would have been taken to an election, and not rushed in as a measure to scrub the internet of the chrstchurch massacre.