Comment on Stop children using VPNs to watch porn, ministers told
IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
If they were really after kids watching porn (or even porn in general) it would be technically somewhat simple to force ISPs to provide filters on their end as a subscription service. I’m pretty sure I’ve even heard that kind of services in the past. Make it even opt-out if you really want to.
That way ISPs would just ban everything from pornhub and others unless you spesifically want it allowed or even provide a portal where you could block reddit, twitter, tumblr or whatever you wish on your account. That kind of technology already exists and it’s used on many corporate setups.
There’s obviously ways around that, but there’s no technical way to block every possible way to move bits between computers. Even if they would shut down the whole internet there’s still ways to build mesh-networks or even buy USB-drives from a shady alley.
But as we all know, it’s not about porn and not about children.
x00z@lemmy.world 1 day ago
You can’t block porn completely without blocking VPNs. If you connect to a VPN that’s all they can see. They can not see what you use the VPN for.
jim3692@discuss.online 20 hours ago
You can’t block VPNs without blocking the entire internet. You can block known VPN services, but you can’t prevent people from hosting their own.
Some known VPN protocols could be blocked, using introspection tools. However, this would just render corporate VPNs useless. VPN traffic is just bytes, and so is WebSockets. Good luck figuring out whether my HTTPS traffic is legitimate internet traffic, or masked VPN traffic.
piecat@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
Good news, we closed that pesky loophole by banning encryption without backdoors.
If they can’t decode it, you better be ready to explain exactly what those bytes were!
ragas@lemmy.ml 9 hours ago
Look at my cool new protocol that looks just like I am just loading a webpage about cat facts, which is actually a hidden VPN that I use to secretly look at webpages about cat facts.
echodot@feddit.uk 13 hours ago
Even if they go that route, and frankly I think they to get lynched, before we got to that point, they can’t monitor every single connection. That just way too much traffic.
That’s why China has a firewall, because that’s the best option they can come up with because monitoring every Chinese persons data is an impossible task. They’re only option would be to go North Korea route and just close the internet but that would basically end their economy.
IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz 23 hours ago
VPN, Tor (and similar, like I2P), every imaginable P2P network, proxies, all non-http protocols (smtp, ftp, nntp, xmpp and other instant messengers and so on) can all transfer any kind of data, porn included. And a ton of other things. Heck, I’m quite sure there’s a minecraft mod where you can assemble JPG-images out of the blocks and view them that way. And then you can use stuff like uuendoce where you can use anything that can move plain text to transfer binary data.
There’s no way to block all of that unless you shut the whole internet down. And even then you can still trade good old playboy-magazines with your friends. VPN in itself has very little to do with the actual problem, beyond that someone apparently noticed that their current “save-the-children” iteration had pretty large holes in it.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Ban paper.
Kids could draw boobies on it.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 1 day ago
This makes it sound like VPNs can ONLY access porn. lol
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
They can also access Excel spreadsheets from what I’ve heard. Hopefully the children aren’t aware of the fact.
x00z@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
he he he
jjlinux@lemmy.zip 17 hours ago
Depends on the VPN