With the UK apparently floating ideas of a VPN ban it’s got me worried about the future of anonymity online. Now people have already pointed out that a VPN ban doesn’t make sense because of all the legitimate uses of one and wouldn’t even be enforceable anyway, but that got me thinking.
What if governments ordered websites (such as social media sites) to block traffic originating from a VPN node? Lots of sites already do this (or restrict your activity if they detect a VPN) to mitigate spam etc. and technically that wouldn’t interfere with “legitimate” (in the eyes of the gov) VPN usage like logging onto corporate networks remotely
It’s already a pain with so many sites either blocking you from access or making you jump through a million captchas using VPNs now. I’m worried it’s about to get a whole lot worse
It’s a law. Just words in a document. It doesn’t have to be realistic or even enforceable for them to pass a law.
Lol it would break so much shit they just couldn’t.
I imagine it’d be a jurisdiction issue for what you propose. If, say, the UK mandates that websites block VPN nodes, that will affect websites served from the UK (creating a Great Firewall of Britain). But what about websites served outside the UK? Those websites can’t possibly tell if a user is from the UK and using a VPN, vs outside the UK and using a VPN, so they can’t only block UK visitors—they’d have to block all VPN traffic, which is probably not worth it from a business point of view. I suppose the UK could then deem that website illegal in the UK and block them, but then that’d only block the website for non-VPN users in the UK… But if the website owner is outside the UK they can’t be punished for violating that law.
More probable (though I still think unlikely) is that a country could sniff for e.g. Wireguard packets and block those. But again that’s unlikely because of businesses using VPNs to let employees access company intranets at home.
These laws tend to effect any company that does business in the state or country. Any commercial service or company wanting to make money from UK customers will be required to implement the VPN block for all their customers.
That would severely cripple remote work/collaboration, which is essential for all megacorps. Unless there’s some sort of carve out for that I don’t see it happening
They will only apply it to retail VPNs. You think capitalists play by the same rules?
Prohibition has never been a deterrent to consumption.
Anything can be made illegal. Enforcement is tricky. At the moment it is very easy to block Wireguard protocol at the ISP level, some even do it. But that would probably push Wireguard and others to invest more in obfuscation.
As a sidenote, it bugs me that Wireguard does not support obfuscation out of the box, and you have to put it on top of wireguard.
How can you ban a VPN (virtual private network)?
I have a VPN setup at home and at my parents home, I can connect either as if I was at either location physically. My office has VPNs for connecting between offices and connecting from remote locations. And dont get me started about being and to purchase a VPS in any country you want, and run a VPN on it.
Does this mean people and companies can no longer setup their own VPN’s.
If this is about privacy and anonymity, evey bowsers on any device has a unique identifying fingerprint that allows it to be identifiable even using a VPN. So what is this ban even targeting?
The Hidden Tracking Method Your VPN Can’t Block - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJOpHSPkWMo
For profit VPNs I think is what everyone means. So people can get past region blocks or censorship. Since they offset very little else.
Anything is possible. Except being free of course.
Just human things.
in my experience, community and people would always find work arounds
That is false. Everyone says that but where where the hacks for direct TV or the Nagra 3 for dish? They never came besides massive money sitting on the table for whoever did. Or modern console jailbreaking? Have the PS5 and latest XBox have hacks?
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