There is no amount of blocking the Internet that will safeguard the children effectively. The real solution is this:
UK Official Calls for Age Verification on VPNs to Prevent Porn Loophole
Submitted 5 weeks ago by schizoidman@lemmy.zip to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
synapse1278@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 5 weeks ago
If this were actually done to children/teens surely their brains would not form any associations between being restrained and horny, right?
0x0@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
Right?
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
seems like a great way to train for hands free orgasms.
PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Wet dreams happen no matter what you can do at puberty.
filcuk@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
They would definiyely want to employ that, if this bullshit actually had anything to do with protecting children.
undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch 5 weeks ago
Seeing this from the US scares me. I already have an elaborate system for tunneling my traffic out of the country without it appearing I’m doing so from my end devices.
But seeing this happening in the UK and knowing there’s a chance of it happening here, I really feel the need to get into China-style circumvention with shadowsocks and what have you, and I need to figure this out sooner rather than later.
IllNess@infosec.pub 5 weeks ago
21 states have laws for age verification on porn sites. 4 more states are in the process of passing laws for age verification. That’s nearly half the states…
ComradeMiao@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Quite insane honestly
fishpen0@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Where will you peer to once these laws are active everywhere. That’s where this is actually headed
abbiistabbii@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
I fucking hate the UK, so much.
The MPs and Peers only fucking learnt about VPNs when this bullshit bill was being passed. They’re so fucking clueless about the whole thing. They don’t understand what a VPN exactly is and what it does and the fact their own government (hopefully) uses them, as do Banks (for security), Companies, and indeed, how it works.
This will lead to more bullshit.
NocturnalEngineer@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Wrote a email to my MP for this exact reason.
The OSA needs repealing. All it’s doing is either teaching people to follow poor digital hygiene practices, or forcing people to follow more risky methods of bypassing the OSA controls.
Whole guise of child safety is laughable when they’ve made zero attempts to educate everyone (not just kids) on being safe online.
pressanykeynow@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
They are not the first country to ban vpns, those bans usually target 95% of individuals who are bad at tech not encrypted communications as a whole. Though I can see Britain ignoring that experience and just shooting itself in the face.
abbiistabbii@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
As is tradition.
dan@upvote.au 5 weeks ago
Only commercial VPNs? So HTTP proxying, Tor, SSH tunneling, SOCKS tunneling, running your own VPN node, etc are all allowed?
x_pikl_x@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I used a server on my personal computer that would just echo back the raw HTML from a PHP call back in the day. Definitely not the safest or best way to do things but ebaum’s world had the best games. All fun til the principal wanted to talk about my friends putting porn on all the computers in the library.
dan@upvote.au 5 weeks ago
CGIProxy / PHProxy were definitely very popular when I was in school. Some of the more tech-savvy kids would get free hosting accounts and install a proxy in them and share the URL.
iopq@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
You can easily make it a ton harder by blocking VPS IPs when serving certain types of content
dan@upvote.au 5 weeks ago
If you have issues with IP blocks, get the AWS equivalent of a VPS (Lightsail). It’s expensive compared to other VPS services - $5/month for only 512MB RAM, 20GB disk and 1TB monthly transfer, when good deals usually have at least 8GB RAM for that price - but it’s difficult for anyone to block Amazon/AWS IPs because so many services use them :)
treesquid@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Shithole country doing shithole things. The UK is acting like a red state, and their standard of living is dropping accordingly.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 5 weeks ago
Uk is closer to US in ideology than to europe post-brexit.
SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
UK was also closer to US ideology pre Brexit.
Arcane2077@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
Even pre-brexit. The UK was never part of the EU, culturally speaking
zarathustra0@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I’d argue that causation may be the other way around.
drspawndisaster@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
It’s recursive
PriorityMotif@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
You can just mail cash to mullvad and include a code that links it to your account.
nymnympseudonym@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
This is how you get under-18s to use [Tor browser](www.torproject.org/download/$
sefra1@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
Until the go government starts blocking entry nodes, then there will be a whole new country relying on the snowflake protocol.
Also, this doesn’t affect only people under 18, any sane adult should never send a copy of their id to anything but the government, bank, insurance or employer.
nymnympseudonym@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
a whole new country relying on the snowflake protocol.
That would put them in the company of China, Russia, and Iran. Getting unrestricted Internet to people in those countries is why I am among those who run a snowflake node on a dedicated VPS (the link also has a simple browser addon – it’s easy to support the network, everyone should)
Yes, these moves suck for UK youth. But, anti-censorship tools do exist, and volunteers like me want people who could benefit from them, to know about & use them.
any sane adult should never send a copy of their id to anything but the government, bank, insurance or employer.
100% agree, take my upvote
pHr34kY@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
If they block entry nodes, just build an entry node. They can’t block stuff inside your own network.
bbb@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
Like Idiocracy has been a manual for the US, V for Vendetta is a manual for the UK.
For fuck sake people, these are movies of worlds we DON’T want to live in.
Roflmasterbigpimp@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Quick! Someone make a movie where the population suffers from affordable housing, free and universal healthcare, fair taxation, and a healthy planet!
TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
You mean Star Trek? But where are the suffering people? It’s no fun when there is no suffering. Why would fascists want a world like that. I don’t understand why there are not more people willing to support the 1%ers. We might all be suffering, but their lives matter too you know! The world we live in right now, like in Don’t Look Up, is much more appealing. I mean, fuck poor people, fuck sick people, fuck hungry people. It’s their life choice. They just should have been born more fortunate. It’s their choice to have no life, no future, no opportunity. Might as well lock them up in prison (concentration camps) and use them for forced labor.
0x0@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
V for Vendetta is a manual for the UK.
Add some 1984 to the mix.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Well both books were written to describe what british authoritarianism would look like.
Tap for spoiler
How long before we have a leak of the PM masturbating to state violence? Ugh V for Vandetta was so sexual in such an intentionally uncomfortable way
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Honestly, the us is going full vendetta too. Our president is really reminiscent of Adam Susan
TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
The US would be better off with president Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho.
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 5 weeks ago
Porn loophole? You can literally Google image search porn.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 5 weeks ago
Yeah, I noticed Google had evaded the ban.
Would have thought they’d be all over the opportunity to gobble up even more data.
ikidd@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I wonder how they figure that’s going to work out.
Jason2357@lemmy.ca 5 weeks ago
Don’t tell them you can buy a vps and run your own vpn in another country.
pressanykeynow@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
They probably know and don’t care because more than 99.99% won’t do it.
Luffy879@lemmy.ml 5 weeks ago
Shh, dont tell him lobotomies became mandatory on birth since Gen Z, and there are only few who still know how this magical phone they are using every day works, let alone know what an IP address is
Opisek@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Accessing the internet now requires age verification. Gg
ErmahgherdDavid@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
In the UK we already have a law where isps block porn by default (blacklisting) the person who took out the contract (who has to be 18 or older because they signed legal contract) can contact the isp and ask them to opt out of these blocks. That’s been a thing for about 10 years. You can own a Pay-as-you-go sim as a minor but you have to send government id to prove you are over 18 to get the adult content filtering turned off.
That’s one of the things that made it clear to me that the new law is an authoritarian data mining operatiok and blatant power grab. Like… We already have these tools in place. If you don’t want your kid accessing porn, don’t opt out of the filters provided by your isp.
You could argue that putting the onus on the platform is more effective at “protecting kids” than having the isps maintain blacklists but there will always be small sites that don’t comply and enterprising kids who find a way around any block. Just like the law requires you to be 18 to buy alcohol or tobacco here but there are always dodgy shops who sell tobacco to underage kids. There are brothers, uncles or heck just straight up parents willing to buy cigarettes and alcohol for underage teens.
This was never about protecting the children. That was the Trojan horse used to justify these laws to the technically uninformed.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 5 weeks ago
To the people of the UK:
What the hell is this authoritarian, pearl clutching shit? You’re fucking shit up for everyone. Can you get your people to please fuck off?
Thanks, from some guy on the Internet.
Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub 5 weeks ago
VPN company: “Don’t care, not in the UK, fuck off.”
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I demand total access to UK official’s private life then.
misteloct@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
Don’t forget to donate to Tor Project and/or a relay operator if you use it, even $1 covers like several TB of traffic.
Zen_Shinobi@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
That’s fine. We’ll just use Tor instead
some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 5 weeks ago
Let’s extend our unpopular law to more places! Soon, you’ll have to verify your age to see boobs in real life. Which will be pretty unfortunate for teens trying to get busy in the backseats of cars.
Wooki@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
UK has a massive federal budget problem and they still keep increasing expenditure on surveillance. That social value is negative at this point as its taking money away from critical services. Well done to the Government continuing the worsen debt, health, and wellbeing of the population.
Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Good luck preventing someone from getting a vps in the another country and doing their own tunnel. It can be done in such a way is undetectable at the protocol level. Coming up next age verification for ssh.
Brewchin@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Doubling down on the batshit. Everyone knew VPNs were going to be the low effort workaround to this authoritarian batshittery.
I get what the (well meaning, I think) people lobbying for this are trying to achieve, but everything from the lobbying to legislation to enforcement seems to be happening in the worst way imaginable. Almost like it’s an intentional “You want to see how badly can we do this? Hold my drink! YOLO!!”
For me, the tell was UK PLC leaving it up to the sites themselves to decide who/how the verification would be done. Classic bad management “I don’t understand the slightest thing about any of this, but HOW HARD COULD IT BE?!” response. It’s like the “series of tubes” stupidity all over again.
cmgvd3lw@discuss.tchncs.de 5 weeks ago
Damn, what is going on there? This is scary even for 18+ users.
PrettyFlyForAFatGuy@feddit.uk 5 weeks ago
Use tor to tunnel to a more enlightened country
buy vpn anonymously
use vpn
Trihilis@ani.social 5 weeks ago
Gee I totally didn’t see this coming and made a comment about it earlier. Oh wait I totally did.
The peoples republic of United Kingdom.
commander@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I’m certain a lot of politicians and veterans are bitter over the lack of universal adoration they get in their own countries. Politicians certainly annoyed with how easy it is for victims of war and veterans against war speaking out against enlistment. Politicians and the rich want their populaces to be patriots whereas the Internet makes people jaded when learning their countries history and present in detail.
I’m certain that’s the real reason internet censorship picked up steam. The Internet has poisoned the well for so many countries when trying to build out some unified national message of righteous action. Can’t like how negative the public reacts to bills described as for child safety. Internet makes it real easy to call it another manipulative cry of wolf. It’s got to be the #1 marketing trick for the rich and powerful. #2 being those foreigners are evil. But shit now people see people across the world are mostly just getting by not even participating in politics or don’t even have any voting power and are just caught in the crossfires of the power hungry
Today there are no heros from the invasions across Asia west to east. In recent times you don’t get a marketing bump for fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Libya, wherever. That’s problematic for patriotism and public support for future war fighting. Every government leader now has a mixed legacy while alive that makes their memory mute in history compared to WW2 and earlier leaders who committed just as much or likely far worse terrors but enjoyed widespread domestic support while in power and adoration in retirement.
National anthems before sporting events are tacky whereas just like 15 years ago damn near everyone bought into those. I swear one day there will monitoring software and crackdowns on hitting the mute button during national anthems and commercials
qwerty@discuss.tchncs.de 5 weeks ago
Are they gonna ban torrents next? Https? You can ssh to a remote server and wget files all day long, or setup vnc and have a vpn like experience.
PattyMcB@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Oh, here we go 🍿
iAvicenna@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
they also thought oat meal and corn flakes would end masturbation, look how that went…
Quazatron@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Look, you are the county that came up with hooligan concept. Do try to apply it locally. I’ve seen the french act harsher for pettier reasons.
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 5 weeks ago
Of course.
j4k3@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Why is the UK such a hell hole all the sudden? I’ve never had such a terrible opinion of the place until now with encryption and authoritarian fuckwitism against the last bastion of real democracy on the internet.
Deceptichum@quokk.au 5 weeks ago
All of a sudden?
This is the country where 1984 was written, where they have more cameras than anywhere else, this sort of social surveillance and quiet, polite fascism is normal for the UK.
phutatorius@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
And almost all those cameras are privately owned and operated, and not integrated into any kind of centralised surveillance apparatus. More typically, they’re in place to deter graffiti or to keep drunks from pissing on the walls outside pubs. Police can and do request footage when investigating crimes, but if a camera owner’s retention policy means the footage has been deleted, that’s the end of the discussion. And such footage is useful if some arsehole has just jammed a broken beer glass into someone else’s face.
The worse forms of authoritarian overreach are the increasingly pervasive number-plate recognition cameras that track the movements of every vehicle, and the inane attempts to regulate the internet and to ban peivate use of encryption.
As for “quiet, polite fascism,” I’ve lived for extended periods in the US and the UK, and so far, despite the seemingly draconian laws, I’ve always found there to be more personal freedom in the UK. The police don’t kill people very often, people tend to ignore the laws and the government can’t be bothered to enforce the most intrusive of them, and there’s far less social pressure towards brainless conformity and mindless obedience than there is in the States.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
When the Snowden Revelations came out, it turned out the UK did as much or maybe even more civil society surveillance as the US, and unlike the US it doesn’t even have constitutional limitations on surveillance of people on their own soil (in fact the UK doesn’t even have a written Constitution).
In the US they actually walked back on some of the surveillance (because of said constitutional protections), in the UK they just passed a law that retroactively made the whole thing legal, got the editor of the newspaper who brought out the Snowden Revelations kicked, fired a bunch of D-Notices around (the UK’s Press Censorship mechanism) out and nobody ever talked about it again.
As soon as the technology was good enough for that the UK created a Digital Stasi and it’s only gotten worse since.
ComradeMiao@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
That’s always such an insane fact to me compared to how many China has. Their traffic cams are impressive
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 5 weeks ago
china has that too.
LadyMeow@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
They over there looking at America being the absolute fuck up it is and are jealous.
fluxion@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
To be fair, they were the OGs of a prosperous stable country spontaneously shooting themselves in the head because someone convinced them they could be doing SOOO much better aaaannd it’s gone…
phutatorius@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
Tony Blair thought that the Labour Party would win if it were more like the US Democratic Party. That began an electorally successful period of unprincipled triangulation and petty authoritarianism. Eventually that momentum fizzled out due to the gloomy paranoid leadership of Gordon Brown, corruption of people like Peter Mandelson, and the loathsome hypocrisy of Blair’s lies in support of GW Bush’s second Gulf War.
Then the Conservatives got in for 14 years and fucked everything up even worse. Now the Blairite authoritarian-centrist faction is again running Labour, and so far has shown none of the political cunning that kept Blair on top. And the media fawns over the smarmy mini-Trump Nigel Farage despite his party having no policies.
warm@kbin.earth 5 weeks ago
Because they have to protect the children!! Oh why won't anyone think of the children?!
anonymouse2@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
Or the poor adults who can’t be bothered to parent their own spawn.
aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
andrew does every night.
Armand1@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Don’t forget transphobia. They seem to have suddenly decided that’s a good idea in the last 3 years.
paraphrand@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
You should watch some Adam Curtis documentaries to get perspective on the UK.
qevlarr@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
It’s always been a bit like this, actually
jobbies@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
Yep. Politicians creating tech policy on the fly without consulting people who actually know what they are talking about.
NeilBru@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I don’t know if it’s the root reason, but one gets scoffed at harshly by the average Tom, Dick, and Harry when suggesting that a Monarchy is an archaic and, frankly, insulting form of governance in spite of protestations that the role of the sovereign is purely ceremonial.
Simply put, they (mostly) seem to prefer political masochism, and are ruled by sadists. Sadly, in 2025, aren’t we all.
IndustryStandard@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Turns out Liberals are Fascists.
j4k3@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Uhh no… Idiots are fascists. Some idiots may call themselves liberal but that doesn’t make it so. Liberals by definition cannot be fascist. The idiots are those that let fascists parade as anything but.
eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
Always have been bit, just with a better PR campaign.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 5 weeks ago
UK is far from being liberal lol, they are closer to the US than not
kepix@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
sometimes the french are right. the brits are indeed cunts.
so seriously, this i brilliantly evil. this is the way that will allow some police state level of oversight for both social media, chats, and even vpn data will be tied to your personal file. this is so dark in every possible way. any site can be labelled porn or harmful at this point. even wikipedia. how dare the young browse the open truth of the internet? and this is already the second phase, mind police.
daw@feddit.org 5 weeks ago
I wouldn’t underestimate the effect Brexit had on this. No there is no check for the national Government anymore.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
knowingly leaking everyones medical information, fucking surveillance camerason every corner… my opinion didn’t meaningfully change by these, they are being a hell hole for a longer time