Associate
They can take our lives but they’ll never take our pr00000000000n!
Adult content - Age Verification system - April 2018
- Thread starter opethdisciple
- Start date
I agree with your post, but I simply cannot see how the government can enforce such a ban, as just about every SME and above in the UK would be up in arms about this when part of their infrastructure was suddenly illegal. A ban would be completely unenforceable, but that probably won't stop someone throwing away our money at trying to implement one.
They couldn't enforce a ban, in terms of actually stopping VPNs from physically working, they could enforce licenses for private VPN users, the effect of that could be that it's a bit harder to connect, there probably wouldn't be any UK VPN hosts, and paying for such a service from a foreign VPN might be problematic - as you'd be paying for an illegal service with your UK bank/CC details, which would make a lot of people think twice.
Soldato
VPNs tend to take bitcoin.
Of course, the more hardcore element are always going to pay for a private VPN with bitcoin, but I'd say that always going to be a very small proportion - the vast majority probably wouldn't stretch that far, and would simply yield in the face of scary leaflets and weak legislation, written by cretins and berks.
Caporegime
They'll have to do better than that to stop me getting my fix.
Pre-paid virtual debit cards?
Which now require about as much verification as setting up a bank account to buy (scans of driving licences etc).
Can't really ban VPNs, that just shows a total lack of understanding of how they work. Banking apps use it for example. If VPNs were banned credit card fraud and identity crime would go through the roof.
When you have a bunch of almost exclusively elderly people
making these kinds of decisions, it really should come as no surprise. It's the political equivalent of mom shouting 'turn off the nintendo' while you're on your playstation. It's for that very same reason the proposal is destined to fail almost immediately. Once an attempt is made to apply it in practice, the ever-hard-working civil servants will mop up the mess as they always do, and discard the law explaining to their superiors the futility of it all. It will take another 20-30 years before we get tech literate people in government with a better understanding of how things work in general.
When you have a bunch of almost exclusively elderly people
making these kinds of decisions, it really should come as no surprise. It's the political equivalent of mom shouting 'turn off the nintendo' while you're on your playstation. It's for that very same reason the proposal is destined to fail almost immediately. Once an attempt is made to apply it in practice, the ever-hard-working civil servants will mop up the mess as they always do, and discard the law explaining to their superiors the futility of it all. It will take another 20-30 years before we get tech literate people in government with a better understanding of how things work in general.
There are ways around even the tightest restrictions atm, simply because some videos exist on cloud based steaming services that are used primarily for normal video streaming. Since they don't restrict the video but the site, I fail to see where they can start making distinction. I.e if YouTube allowed over 18 content would YouTube be banned?
Can't really ban VPNs, that just shows a total lack of understanding of how they work. Banking apps use it for example. If VPNs were banned credit card fraud and identity crime would go through the roof.
When you have a bunch of almost exclusively elderly people
making these kinds of decisions, it really should come as no surprise. It's the political equivalent of mom shouting 'turn off the nintendo' while you're on your playstation. It's for that very same reason the proposal is destined to fail almost immediately. Once an attempt is made to apply it in practice, the ever-hard-working civil servants will mop up the mess as they always do, and discard the law explaining to their superiors the futility of it all. It will take another 20-30 years before we get tech literate people in government with a better understanding of how things work in general.
That's the worrying problem though.
Plenty of times those in govt have proven they don't know squat about how things work.
Well, that & they most likely don't give a rats arse, as long as they can push their own plans.
Can someone please tell me where they get the idea that they're going to ban the entirety of VPN as a protocol? I think one person got confused between VPN and VPNs (yes, there is a difference) and the nonsense idea has just been snowballing ever since.
Nonsense about "oh but banks need VPN" comes up in every thread about the topic, but it's completely unrelated, and always uttered by people who have zero networking knowledge/background. So let me set the record straight....
Banks setting up networking protocols/point to point tunnelling systems, which happen to necessitate the set-up and use of A "VPN", has got nothing to do with some dodgy providers who are selling free-for-all access to their VPNs to use as a general IP traffic anonymisation/proxy service. When banks use VPN they're not doing it to anonymise their traffic, they using it for it's INTENDED purpose, which is to have a network tunnel over the public internet in order to make Local resources available on a wider network. It's basically to provide a LAN over a WAN, not to anonoymise general IP traffic.
When they banned torrents, did they criminalise the use of the entire bit-torrent protocol? NO (even though 99.99999% of it's use is for PIRACY). They banned select Torrent Tracker websites specialising in copyrighted materials. You can still use the bit-torrent protocol!
Therefore, when they ban VPNs, they're talking about VPNs, not "VPN". They're going to ban access to certain providers who are selling access to their VPNs as a general un-logged free-for-all anonymiser service.
So to remain logically consistent, we must differentiate legitimate and FULLY LOGGED, HIGHLY LIMITED ACCESS and SECURED use of "VPN protocol" by regulated entities such as banks, VS the dodgy completely unregulated use of free-for-all public "VPNs servers" which people have doted around in various data centres to facilitate in nothing but general IP traffic anonymisation.
Thank you for reading.
Nonsense about "oh but banks need VPN" comes up in every thread about the topic, but it's completely unrelated, and always uttered by people who have zero networking knowledge/background. So let me set the record straight....
Banks setting up networking protocols/point to point tunnelling systems, which happen to necessitate the set-up and use of A "VPN", has got nothing to do with some dodgy providers who are selling free-for-all access to their VPNs to use as a general IP traffic anonymisation/proxy service. When banks use VPN they're not doing it to anonymise their traffic, they using it for it's INTENDED purpose, which is to have a network tunnel over the public internet in order to make Local resources available on a wider network. It's basically to provide a LAN over a WAN, not to anonoymise general IP traffic.
When they banned torrents, did they criminalise the use of the entire bit-torrent protocol? NO (even though 99.99999% of it's use is for PIRACY). They banned select Torrent Tracker websites specialising in copyrighted materials. You can still use the bit-torrent protocol!
Therefore, when they ban VPNs, they're talking about VPNs, not "VPN". They're going to ban access to certain providers who are selling access to their VPNs as a general un-logged free-for-all anonymiser service.
So to remain logically consistent, we must differentiate legitimate and FULLY LOGGED, HIGHLY LIMITED ACCESS and SECURED use of "VPN protocol" by regulated entities such as banks, VS the dodgy completely unregulated use of free-for-all public "VPNs servers" which people have doted around in various data centres to facilitate in nothing but general IP traffic anonymisation.
Thank you for reading.
Soldato
You're quite right, but they'll never successfully ban VPNs. Just as the dark-web still exists, now sure they take down sites from it such as the one that was used to sell drugs and hitmen for hire - and I'm sure they took down a web hosting company specialising in the dark-web.
How do they stop VPNs? I don't see a way at all that can't be circumvented?
Exactly. You cant ban VPN, all they can do is criminalise the use of certain VPN providers and/or block access to particular VPNs at the ISP level, much like they do with torrent sites.
Soldato
Criminalise something that has a valid use
I use a VPN when I'm on Wireless Networks that I don't trust (I travel with work often, hotels are commonplace as are cafes). I seriously hope not. Blocking access to VPNs at ISP level would have to be done based on IP addresses of their servers which could be changed as soon as the court ruling goes through What's to stop something similar to TOR? That isn't blockable at all because of it's nature, surely?
It can be done, but it's difficult, most VPNs ride on port 80/443, so they'll cut through any firewall, however VPNs do have traffic patterns and metadata that can be identified by more intelligent devices, (Nokia Deepfield, Arbor, etc) so it's physically possible to detect VPN use on a network simply by it's signature, rather than knowing what it actually is. I've seen Arbor block TOR before, and know other places have done it, albeit with varying degrees of success, it depends how accurate the collection of TOR endpoints is.
TLDR; yeah they can be blocked, but it depends how much effort you're willing to invest in doing it,
Soldato
What you haven't answered is why we should deny the general law-abiding public their privacy, aka traffic anonymity.
Would you like to see CCTV on every street, in every bus, in every public building, so that we can be monitored 24/7, and potentially have data about our habits collected?
Because denying traffic anonymity or traffic privacy is effectively the same thing.
What about HTTPS and encryption? If you're concerned about anonymity being such a terrible thing, as it appears MPs are, then maybe you also have a big problem with encrypted connections, etc.
I don't think we should deny that at all.