“Hey! Stop using well known workarounds to my idiot demands! Surely this is brand new technology that no one could have known about!”
UK households could face VPN 'ban' after use skyrockets following Online Safety Bill
Submitted 2 months ago by themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/uk-households-could-face-vpn-32152789
Comments
falynns@lemmy.world 1 month ago
MangioneDontMiss@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
This online safety bill is dishonest. This has nothing to do with safety and everything to do with money.
Bubbey@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Even the CCP can’t stop VPNs… good luck UK
imouto@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Most conventional VPNs, e.g. OpenVPN, WireGuard, AnyConnect, PPTP/L2TP, IKEv2/IPsec, etc., actually don’t work in China. Technology-wise GFW is quite sophisticated and conventional VPNs are not designed for censorship circumvention anyway.
You’ll have to use things like Shadowsocks or V2Ray, which is out of the reach of most people.
NateNate60@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The Great Firewall doesn’t block by protocol. If you set up your own OpenVPN server, you can still connect to it. I’ve done this many times in my trips to China, and it’s worked fine. That being said, they still do seem to throttle connections to international servers, though this happens to all servers, even those that are not blocked. There are many clandestine VPN operators in China who spin up their own VPN servers and sell the service. They are mostly OpenVPN-based.
My university used Cisco AnyConnect, and I was able to successfully connect to the university VPN servers as well.
The limited experimentation I have conducted seems to indicate that the Great Firewall blocks by IP and not by protocol.
1984@lemmy.today 1 month ago
So companies are not using vpns?
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The more you try to stop them, the better their business gets, heh.
kemsat@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The UK is the testing grounds. After they figure it out, they’ll be rolling it out everywhere else.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I don’t think it’s that centralized. Just some elite somewhere pushes through what elites everywhere would want, and they try to do the same around it.
Like spread of a disease.
I think the way to fight it is similar. Unions, customer associations, parties (not for election, but for having as many people as possible for mutual aid and actions ; it might even be counterproductive to get into government, since that breeds expectations which are not delivered upon, which hurts the party ; better to do volunteer projects without using state power as much as possible).
kemsat@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Yeah, I don’t think it is, but it’s the end result that concerns me.
Ronno@feddit.nl 1 month ago
“Stop defending yourself, and let me hit you” vibes.
notarobot@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
Do not retaliate and you will be rewarded
DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
And there’s the other shoe dropping with VPNs now. Didn’t even take them an extra fucking year
ragas@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
Didn’t even take a week.
TheOrionArm@lemmy.world 1 month ago
How is this even feasible? People need them for work, business, school etc. The UK is going nuts with the attempts to regulate the internet.
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 1 month ago
It isn’t. And the only source in the article is that a far-right conspiracy theory site said they’re considering it.
Ironfist79@lemmy.world 1 month ago
They just can’t stand not being able to control people.
ohshit604@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Probably force an insecure protocol and market it as “top of the line”.
NateNate60@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Take China for example. There is a common misconception that all VPNs are illegal in China. That’s not fully true. In China, VPNs are legal and must obtain a licence from the Ministry of Public Security, like all other online businesses. This also means that they have to agree to monitoring and censorship from the Government, so you can’t use legal VPN services to bypass the firewall in China.
Clbull@lemmy.world 2 months ago
(NOTE: Any links to politician tweets in this comment are from Nitter mirrors, not direct links to Elon Musk’s nazi bar.)
The Technology Secretary, Peter Kyle, pretty much called Nigel Farage a paedophile in a news network interview earlier today because he opposed the Online Safety Act, by saying he’s on the side of sex offenders like Jimmy Savile. He then went to Twitter and doubled-down on this stance, amid a lot of fury.
For context, the Online Safety Act has been used to censor and age-gate anything and everything deemed “illegal content” under Ofcom guidelines, else risk getting fined up to 10% of your annual global revenue. This includes anything related to illegal immigration and people-smuggling. Twitter had genuinely been forced to censor all coverage around anti-asylum seeker protests behind age verification requirements.
Zia Yusuf (head of Reform’s DOGE division, yes they’re ripping off Trump and Elon Musk) had this to say about the OSA on Twitter:
Britain is now a country which you can enter illegally without ID, but need photo ID to watch a protest against people entering without ID.
Let that sink in.
Labour have fucked up so catastrophically hard with how they’ve handled this legislation, that they’ve straight-up generated bipartisan sympathy for the leaders of a right-wing populist party - who are the only political force that have vowed to repeal the legislation because it is being used for mass surveillance and censorship.
If Labour don’t get rid of Keir Starmer, do a full cabinet reshuffle and reverse course, we are going to see a Reform landslide in the next election…
Bubbey@lemmy.world 1 month ago
i don’t trust a hair on Farage’s little head lol
Luouth@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Bye bye UK economy. How do you expect businesses to work without VPNs?
themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
My guess they will block VPN services IP addresses like proton, shouldn’t affect business VPN.
Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 2 months ago
But what if I work for Proton and I am in the UK?
then_three_more@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Ban remote working, vpn now only allowed from business addresses as registered with companies house.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
VPN in businesses is mostly to secure internal use infrastructure against external threats.
tal@lemmy.today 1 month ago
"If VPNs cause significant issues, the Government must identify those issues and find solutions, rather than avoiding difficult problems.”
When I was a kid, Reddit and general public Internet access weren’t things, but I sure managed to get my hands on pornography. I’m pretty confident that even entirely killing Internet access isn’t going to stop kids who want to get ahold of porn from getting ahold of it.
ThePrivacyPolicy@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
Kids will be out there studying for their ham radio licenses to setup wireless long range packet networks and bbs’s just to exchange porn lol
ReiRose@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Nanny state
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 month ago
You’re literally being Jimmy Salvile right now
~ Guy who posed for photo ops with Salvile twenty years ago
ReiRose@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Omg my brother amd I went to see Rolf Harris when we were kids and he invited my brother onto the stage. So woerd to think of now 😕
some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 1 month ago
Enterprises will love that. A perfect excuse to end wfh. However, this will cripple business travelers. I’m sure there’ll be some exception for corporations where they can exercise maximum control over their employees while still being allowed to generate capital.
Hey UK: suck it.
Mr_Dr_Oink@lemmy.world 1 month ago
They couldn’t switch off VPNs for businesses. I work in a hospital and we use VPNs to create secure tunnels to other third party health care companies as well as NHS adjacent health services amongst other things. This is to protect patient sensitive data amongst other things. This would cripple our service and go against NHS england and government requirements for the secure transfer and sharing of data.
This would have to be public VPNs only. Despite the fact that it would be complete bullshit either way.
muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Exactly. They best they could hope to do would be to create an exemption for businesses in which case I open my own fapping business.
blargle@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Well, you could just go back to sending stuff by fax machine forever, but then instead of even using the fax machine to sync patient data just make the patients fill out their own entire medical history from scratch every time they go to a different doctor and take their word for it.
UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
This is to protect patient sensitive data amongst other things.
Its 2025, we no longer need such silly things. Don’t worry, its for the greater good.
atticus88th@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Ive got a few UK coworkers that will be out of the job if anything disables VPNs. They voted for that mess now they can sleep in their 1/3 salary local jobs too.
gaiussabinus@lemmy.world 1 month ago
A VPN is just a proxy. I don’t see how this would be enforced.
rob_t_firefly@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The linked story has been updated. The headline now reads:
Labour rules out VPN ban in UK but issues warning to UK households
Labour won’t ban the use of Virtual Private Networks
And the story begins:
Labour Party Tech Secretary Peter Kyle has revealed that the Government is “not considering a VPN ban” - after reports in Guido Fawkes suggested it was possible.
phoenixz@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
This shows that this bill has shit all to do with the protection of children, it’s just again the over reach of religious zealots
Can we please ban religions instead? This would ACTUALLY protect minors and just in general make the world such a better and more beautiful place.
Convert churches into museums for art and displaying the horrors of religion
HalfSalesman@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Convert churches into museums for art and displaying the horrors of religion
Not all of them have pretty art. Just turn the boring looking ones into secular club houses or even just regular housing.
BagOfHeavyStones@piefed.social 2 months ago
Couldn't people just hire a VPS in another country and VPN with that using Wireguard etc, or even use RDP etc to it? Is it even a VPN if you're remotely operating a computer in another country?
4am@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
WireGuard would be illegal. ISPs would monitor for encrypted traffic streams. All remote workers must now come back to the office. ofcom can see any and all traffic. Your loyalty to the king shall be examined. You choices of media will be scrutinized. The threat of losing your children will be used to force compliance. Welcome to the machine.
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Perry much every single website uses HTTPS these days which means all traffic is encrypted anyway. Instead of a VPN you could use an encrypted proxy that connects over HTTPS. I doubt the UK is just going to completely cut itself off from the rest of the world’s internet (because all it takes is one path out).
moseschrute@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Can we develop a new VPN protocol where the encrypted traffic is disguised as a 24 hour continuous stream of Never Gonna Give You Up
ouRKaoS@lemmy.today 2 months ago
tankplanker@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Work based VPNs would likely have to obtain a license from Ofcom, it would be highly unlikely to block them completely. Probably be requesting a back door into the work VPNs at the same time just like they have for other encryption, lol.
warm@kbin.earth 2 months ago
Tempora already snoops on traffic.
Eximius@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Refer to other comment. They don’t see “VPN traffic”, they see encrypted tunnels between two ports to some offshore vps. At best, they see a header saying “openvpn”. The article is alluding to the country wanting to crack down on encrypted tunnels (because you cannot discriminate VPNs from them).
elvith@feddit.org 2 months ago
At best, they see a TLS handshake that gets upgraded to an encrypted websocket which hides VPN traffic…
Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
There will always be a way to bypass laws that do not serve the people.
shalafi@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I have a Digital Ocean droplet in Amsterdam, runs OpenVPN server. $6/mo., no one sees my activity, haven’t logged into it in years.
No1@aussie.zone 1 month ago
Netherlands is part of the Nine eyes. They know exactly what your activities are.
krigo666@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Ah, fascism on the rise.
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Someone should start a bussiness near the border of Republic of Ireland and get two antennas pointed at each other across the border, with the RoI side having connected to the free internet, then the UK Northern Ireland side connected to the Intra-net. You pay a “Club Membership Fee” to get access to the proxy network.
Its not a VPN, its a Nerd Techie Club, just with a free proxy service as part of the club membership 😉
ThePrivacyPolicy@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
Gonna end up with a country-wide rogue WiFi mesh network setup that’s fed from neighboring countries haha
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 1 month ago
It’s it possible to turn our phones into Intranet nodes and have some connect to the uncensored Internet?
sturmblast@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Yeah, businesses will not accept this. Remote work and remote connections rely on VPN for ALL KINDS OF SHIT. Some of it is even mandated BY THE FUCKING GOVERNMENT.
Shayeta@feddit.org 1 month ago
Individual customer VPN providers get banned, corporate VPN providers not banned. It’s quite simple really.
Or are you expecting the average Joe to spin up his own VPN server?
sturmblast@lemmy.world 1 month ago
And how do you expect that to work on a technical level?
socsa@piefed.social 1 month ago
You don't get it. They will just force VPNs to black list sites. Business users will happily do it because they don't care about porn anyway. Any VPN which doesn't enforce UK laws will be blocked at the ISP level.
sturmblast@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I just don’t believe that method will be as successful as you may think.
commander@lemmy.world 1 month ago
To me it looks like every government in the world is pro-surveillance and anti-privacy; they’re just all at different stages of depth into those ideologies done in practice. Privacy and anti-surveillance against foreign governments and corporations, pro for domestic. And I continue decade after decade to say that you should fear your domestic government far more than any foreign unless you’re a country that may have US and allies bombing/droning and paratrooping your country
GladiusB@lemmy.world 1 month ago
To me it looks like every government in the world is pro-surveillance and anti-privacy; they’re just all at different stages of depth into those ideologies done in practice.
Because they are all fuckin crooked and all want to keep their power.
inkrifle@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Labour has already spoken out and said they will make no attempts to ban VPNs.
HertzDentalBar@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month ago
I doubt their corpo overlords would allow a VPN ban considering the amount of companies that use them.
cheloxin@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
It would be trivial for them to write it so it bans it for citizen use but is allowed for corporate and government use. The people have no rights anymore
undergroundoverground@lemmy.world 1 month ago
This makes me feel like they were in a bind here. The so called “online safety bill” was a tory concoction that took years to pass through the courts because of how invasive it is and how anyone could easily bypass it.
If labour want to stop it, they’ll be accused of not wanting to protect children.
Whatever anyone thinks of labour, what option do they have other than to let it play out as the spectacular failure it was always going to be and making sure everyone knows who’s fault that was afterwards?
IcyToes@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
No. They could put it into a review and quietly shitcan this. It’s not particularly popular. They just want to say they’re protecting kids.
They’re spineless and Keir is an authoritarian.
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
I love watching politicians try to understand the internet.
VPNs have loads of vanilla use cases.
It would be infinitely more productive to regulate the predatory practices of stream providers and reduce the incentive for piracy.
MehBlah@lemmy.world 2 months ago
There are ways around this even if they do ban vpn. Its a hopeless battle being fought by the ignorant.
derpgon@programming.dev 2 months ago
I mean anyone can rent a server in Europe and install OpenVPN themselves. Hell, it doesn’t even need to open OpenVPN, Wireguard works just as well and is basically undetectable.
Eat shit, UK government, for real. Idiots think that by speaking the same language as US fascists they can have similarly dumb ideas.
MehBlah@lemmy.world 1 month ago
It would have been my go to. But they can detect openvpn and other protocols. I would just use a ssh tunnel with squid proxy. The squid wont cache ssh traffic unless you run your own cert and set up the squid that way. It will however seamlessly allow you to connect through a ssh tunnel with one port forward.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
wireguard is not undetectable, even wireshark has a simple way to identify it, but there are more accurate ways
jabjoe@feddit.uk 2 months ago
To be honest, I’ve found WireGuard’s performance is harmed more by reply attacks than OpenVPN. Least that is what I put it down to when I tried them both from a VPN provider that offered both.
UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
They will use it as an excuse to give themselves more power and to take more civil liberties from you.
MCasq_qsaCJ_234@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Freenet, I2P and Tor will be the new refuge
0x0@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
I think it’s Hyphanet now.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 month ago
just do what the chinese do to get around thier great wall. use proxies and anti-detect browsers, its the next step after VPN… you might want to look around how to set these up.
JustTheWind@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Just adopt a CCP style social credit system already. Why all of this pussyfooting around being a totalitarian, censorship focused, surveillance state? Just do it. Give the good people of UK a solid reason to be a little bit more French again.
PushButton@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The Collective Shout Out must feel envious of such power… Think about all what they could ban, you know, for you and your children protection of course.
MU5T4N6@feddit.org 2 months ago
Labour was supposed to destroy the Tories, not join them!
assassinatedbyCIA@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The UK government doth protest too much about protecting the kids. It’s obvious that this who thing is just an attempt to increase the surveillance of the UK population.
possumparty@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month ago
I’m looking forward to the next UK election where the headline will be: Labour has lost the election in a landslide that left them with dozens of votes total
Every single person who didn’t think this would affect them who watches porn in any capacity is very likely highly pissed off and will continue to be for as long as this draconian bullshit is enabled.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Freedom from EU regulation. 😋
NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 2 months ago
Labour are not governing for the people, and they are not the Labour party anymore.
samus12345@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
They’re Labouring very hard for the corporations.
Digestive_Biscuit@feddit.uk 1 month ago
If they ban VPN’s that’s going to hit corporations harder than the average person.