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VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

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Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#961

Post by TZubiri »

donmcronald wrote: post #897
TZubiri wrote: post #855

Here's a consequence few consider: Malicious actors are now harder to distinguish than legitimate actors, since they both will use VPNs. This is because in essence what VPNs are used for is always to evade the law, regardless of whether it is a law with high approval, like CASM, malware, spamming, drug trade; or laws with high approval for breaking them, like pornography age verification laws, or Intellectual Propert…

The next law will make it illegal to accept traffic from VPNs. They’re letting VPNs exist for now so people think they have a simple bypass. They’ll close that off as soon as the onerous laws pass. It’s already done a bit voluntarily. Try to use a VPN and pay for something with a prepaid credit card. Try to make a Steam account. Etc. Get ready for a verified ID that’s required to access anything online because that’s…

It'd make sense, VPNs are fraudulent in that they lie about the origin of a connection.

There's precedent in financial regulation, is it legal to send and receive wires to and from a swiss bank to conceal their russian or chinese or congolese or iraki origin?

Similarly in intl. trade it is illegal to hide the origin of imports, it is even illegal to reroute imports for the purpose of evading tariffs or compliance.

If y'all want to keep VPNs legal, I suggest you find better excuses than downloading porn and evading netflix restrictions, because the other side argues about infinitely higher stakes.

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#962

Post by djao »

pc86 wrote: post #785
e4325f wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't make any sense, it's in Netflix's interest to prevent this, but it's the opposite for porn sites.

Porn sites don't have any interest in keeping this law either. Nobody with a functioning brain thinks you should have to upload your government ID to a website to browse content, no matter what that content is.

That's what OP said. Netflix and its customers have opposing interests. The customers want to use VPNs, whereas Netflix doesn't want to allow VPNs. The customers don't care about following anti-piracy laws, whereas Netflix wants to enforce them.

The situation is the opposite for age verification laws. In this case, both porn sites and their customers have aligned interests. Both sides want to allow VPNs. Both sides want to abolish age verification laws, and if that is not possible, to circumvent them.

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#963

Post by apatheticonion »

gorgoiler wrote: post #63

The VPN trick potentially won’t last long. We’ve seen it go stale already in the world of intellectual property rights. For at least the last ten years Netflix et al have been well aware of which AS numbers / IP netblocks correspond to people sat at home in front of the TV, and which correspond to servers in a rack somewhere (including those hosting VPN endpoints.) One tweak to the rules and all of a sudden not only…

Does IPV6 change this dynamic at all?

It's conceivable that a VPN provider could change the V6 IP on their server every hour for the rest of time and still get unique addresses.

If the VPN server only has an IPV6 address and no V4 address, can they connect to the target website?

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#964

Post by gorgoiler »

apatheticonion wrote: post #963
gorgoiler wrote: post #63

The VPN trick potentially won’t last long. We’ve seen it go stale already in the world of intellectual property rights. For at least the last ten years Netflix et al have been well aware of which AS numbers / IP netblocks correspond to people sat at home in front of the TV, and which correspond to servers in a rack somewhere (including those hosting VPN endpoints.) One tweak to the rules and all of a sudden not only…

Does IPV6 change this dynamic at all? It's conceivable that a VPN provider could change the V6 IP on their server every hour for the rest of time and still get unique addresses. If the VPN server only has an IPV6 address and no V4 address, can they connect to the target website?

IP addresses are routed in aggregate groups using BGP. The groups are called Autonomous Systems and are handed out to ISPs. Your home ISP has a bunch. The ISP that hosts your virtual server has some too. You can see the one you’re connecting from right now with tools like https://bgp.tools and https://bgp.he.net.

The number of these systems scales in a reasonably tractable way — on the order of the number of ISPs and physical Internet infrastructure around which traffic needs to be routed.

As well as making aggregate routing possible you can use the ISP’s registration details see what location (or legal jurisdiction) a whole chunk of address space has. Hopping around IP addresses will give you unique ones every five minutes but they’ll all still be inside 2001:123::/32 from AS1234 aka Apathetic Onion’s Finest Habidashery and Internet Connections LLC, Delaware, USA.

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#965

Post by snerbles »

amelius wrote: post #681
gorgoiler wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tor exit nodes are the _first_ thing they ban! If your origin is not from within one of the top residential ISPs then you can expect to be selected for enhanced screening .

But what if 50% of the adult population starts using it?

Then the law is enforced selectively at the whims of the state.

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#966

Post by donmcronald »

uyzstvqs wrote: post #948
donmcronald wrote: post #912

I wonder what the (supposed) anti-censorship people that supported things like eSNI and DoH think about this. They took away our ability to filter our own networks, so now we can't even argue that filtering and monitoring is something that should be done on the client side (per network). Sometimes I feel like both sides are actually just one side playing the long game. IMO the goal is to get verified digital IDs in u…

The solution is to have filtering on the actual client devices. There need to be specialized minor-friendly devices with parental controls at the OS level, and apps need a standardized framework to integrate with those parental controls. Then create regulation that devices used by minors must have such a system, with the standard that every new action (app install, first time visiting a website, new contact, joining…

This is 100% correct IMO. Even just the timeline of actions would be enough for most people I know.

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#967

Post by johnisgood »

mywittyname wrote: post #632
qingcharles wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. A lot of countries in the Middle East block all sorts of stuff and yet VPN usage is ubiquitous, but the governments appear to turn a blind eye. Like "we've done our bit and made the law." So it remains to be seen how far they'll go with this.

It's probably more a matter of, "let everyone engage in illegal activities, which we can then use to turn the screws on them if they ever need to." This is a ubiquitous tactic at the highest level of law enforcement.

That is what the UK has been doing and is doing, along with most if not all Governments. One just has to take a look at UK's 2003 Communication Act. It can be selectively enforced against you if they do not like you.

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#968

Post by ifwinterco »

teamonkey wrote: post #669
ifwinterco wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Immigration is becoming the #1 political issue in the UK for a reason. If they didn't want this, they could have just restricted it and it would have largely gone away as a topic of discussion, but current levels makes it inevitable it will become the main thing people think about

It’s a #1 political issue because certain political factions keep leaning on it, constantly, and have done for years.

If this were the case, then you have to explain why other things that are heavily leant on (e.g. global warming, or trans issues just to give two obvious examples) by a large part of the political establishment and mainstream media fail to have much cut through with most of the population.

The reason immigration has cut through is it corresponds with people's own direct lived experience. It's not an abstract concept to people, it's visceral and real

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#969

Post by ifwinterco »

tom_ wrote: post #677
ifwinterco wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you're getting downvoted, this is a classic YooKay 2025 moment

I assume it's because she is quite well known for not taking the grooming gangs' side.

Fair enough, I shouldn't have commented without knowing the full context

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#970

Post by Devilspawn6666 »

portaouflop wrote: post #42
alwa wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “West Yorkshire Police denied any involvement in blocking the footage. X declined to comment, but its AI chatbot, Grok, indicated the clip had been restricted under the Online Safety Act due to violent content.” I’m not involved with X or with its chatbot. Is its chatbot ordinarily an authoritative source for facts about assumptions like this one, that the law “was used to take down” politically sensitive video? It…

Of course LLMs are a rubbish source for facts, one should always verify. Not possible in this case so I would assume it just made it up

For clear evidence it's happening see https://youtu.be/YQDC4EklerM?si=krX2KP5tv8MEzaTj
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