Post
RE: https://social.vivaldi.net/@LonM/115966748145817371
UK PEOPLE: this is REALLY IMPORTANT. If the government bans under-16s from using VPNs, then logically they must intend to REQUIRE AGE VERIFICATION FOR ALL VPN USE. Which will affect adults too!
*Your* privacy and right to anonymous web browsing is at risk!
@cstross Only if I want to access content that's not appropriate for under-16s. If I did, I'd watch TV. I think I heard a Labour minister celebrating that compulsory age-checks on pr0n sites had greatly reduced consumption. There goes another successful UK industry. I wonder what the punters did with their sexual frustration instead? MPs can have that question free, to ask at PMQs.
@woo Weirdly, VPN users rose by *almost exactly* the same number as the fall in age-verified porn users. Fancy that!
Good luck to the government making every company register every adhoc vpn between sites, or even my home Tailscale to my parents...
Makes you wonder how all these remote workers will manage without a VPN connection to their employers IT infrastructure 😉
When did we get a right to anonymous web browsing exactly?
@cstross Wait... presumably age verification shouldn't be required if payment method = credit card, right?
Only over 18's can obtain a credit card.
Anyone age 16-18 is in a pickle though.
@cstross I've written to my MP about this already, so an easy decision to add my signature to the petition.
@cstross Soon you'll need to get your age verified before you can use an age-verification service.
@cstross as a kid growing up in europe and taught again and again about the resistance, I'd always thought that my lack of physical prowess would mean I'd be mostly useless if it ever happened again. But now that it's rearing it's head all I can hear is my mother saying "you'll never amount to anything spending all your days on that computer". Look at me now mom, my knowledge may just save the free world.
@cstross so we can employ children from the age of 14 but not for jobs that might require VPN usage.
https://www.gov.uk/child-employment
@cstross Haven't adults clued into the fact that trying to force kids into boxes, never works out? On top of the privacy issues.
@cstross it also means banning anyone under age from owning/renting a server in a different country, with very much the same implications for people over the age limit, since setting up a VPN endpoint is reasonably easy enough for your average technically inclined 16 year old. Oh and also, it outlaws TOR, if taken to its logical conclusion.
@cstross Reason number "a zillion and some" why privacy, etc. is better served using something decentralized like Tor, rather than VPNs companies that can be forced to ID-check UK users.
@cstross I have a fleet of devices in the field that communicate back to my infrastructure over VPN links. Do those devices now have to prove they're over 16? Do both ends? Does anybody in charge have any fucking idea what they're doing?
@cstross There's no way they can possibly enforce this for existing VPN users.
The assumption is that the govt needs to implement age verification for an ostensibly sensible reason (in this case preventing under-16s accessing unsuitable material), but in reality age verification is often no different to identity verification and so by extension the govt ends up verifying the identity of the user of every mobile device, which thanks to the general dependency on Apple and Google phones would give the govt the ability to identify and track anyone with a smartphone.
@cstross It's impossible to restrict access to VPNs.
They could perhaps persuade some of the big providers to add access controls, but that would only result in more people using smaller or even self-hosted VPN services.
You can't un-invent encryption algorithms.
@cstross They don't even know what a VPN is or does. They tried to do this with e2e encryption key escrow, to include vpns in about 2017 and then quietly dropped it probably because someone has pointed out that businesses use them extensively for commerce comms and b2b services. Regardless of whether or not the positive effects they want are achieved (they won't be) the negatives will far outweigh them, and it still won't protect kids any better.
@cstross It would be nice if the government would encourage parents to do the actual parenting, instead of trying to force their idea parenting down everyone's throats.
@cstross you can run your own VPN, I’ve automated the process in https://github.com/fazalmajid/edgewalker
At that point, *you* are the VPN provider and in compliance. Until the next brain dead decision the parasites descended from thugs in the House of Drolls come up with.
@fazalmajid Right, so that would require me to learn and install OpenBSD and a full stack. (The last BSD I used in anger was SunOS 4.1.3.)
@cstross there are others, like Argo, or Streisand
@cstross Ethical issues aside - how are m2m VPNs expected to validate their age?
"hi, I'm an environment monitoring device and was born barely 6 months ago, but I swear I'm old enough to use my built-in VPN to access my MQTT server"
@cstross just to point out that Linux, Android and other things have a VPN built in so the results will actually be even more idiotic.
It will also stop trans kids using Tor to get info, something I am sure labour think is a huge win
@cstross I sort of wonder how my extremely risk averse, security conscious employer who depends on VPNs is going to react to this
@capriciousday Like banks and other financial institutions who require their employees to use them when working out of the office, or over wifi *within* the office.
@cstross @capriciousday Lawyers likewise. Working at home or in a court building, using confidential & legally privileged data on the office server...
I agree this is bad...
But anyone who thinks browsing via a VPN is anonymous needs to learn more.
@oschonrock Obviously it's not automatically anonymous, but it's a useful first step. And look who else is banning VPNs! (Hint: Iran, before they shut down cross-border internet completely. China. And so on.)
@cstross it's really not that useful a first step.
It's just what the VPN industry has drummed into us with ubiquitous marketing.
Just install the "tor browser". It's free, cross platform and provides much more privacy than any VPN.
If you need true anonymity then use a privacy focused OS like "tails".
Even better, these tools cannot be blocked or gated by governments.
VPNs are largely useless things sold by people who want your money.
Which is cleary the _actual_ intent behind suggested legislation.
@cstross once more parliament doing a thing because it is something, and it is mistaken that it is better than doing nothing. How would this legislation work with parental control VPNs? They have no idea, most likely because most of them have no idea they even exist.
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