zlacker

Kinda worried they'll just get to work banning consumer VPN use?

>>nemoma+(OP)
how would that work? Besides blocking the websites to download some VPN. Or if someone already has a VPN installed.

>>nebben+9
Get the websites blocked too, some kinda minor fine if you're identified as using one, make it seem scary in the public eye to discourage it, ban advertisements?

You can't really stop it, but you can start treating it like Piracy. Maybe ISPs could snoop and report traffic that seems to be going to a VPN even if they can't inspect it.

>>nebben+9
I see you’ve never been anywhere that blocks VPNs.

First they will make it seem like only criminals would use VPNs, then they’ll target some actually shady VPN services to use as a scapegoat, then they’ll apply punitive measures to them specifically; then they will use the fact that they have already used punitive measures as a reason to use them blanketly.

Technically: it’s pretty trivial to block almost all VPNs at an ISP level. I think only anyconnect/openconnect is difficult (not impossible) to block.

That this would affect businesses is of no consequence.

>>dijit+C
DPI can figure out standard VPNs, including anyconnect, pretty well based on timing and packet sizes.

There are tools designed to evade DPI detection, but even those don't make out out of the Great Firewall of China most of the time.

Technical solutions to political problems only go so far.

>>nebben+9
Doesn’t need to be workable to outlaw it. Turning everyone into a criminal on paper and selectively enforcing is a win for gov

>>nebben+9
They could probably manage to deal with the big players (who have enough advertising reach to be used by "ordinary" people). I doubt they could ever block the long tail of non-standard VPNs, especially those that share infrastructure used for legitimate purposes (are they going to ban SSH connections to AWS?).

>>nebben+9
It doesn't have to work on a technical level. Just grab a few people at random, torture them until someone admits guilt, then televise the guilty verdict and life-destroying sentence. Do this two or three times and fear will do the rest of the work for you.

The goal here is compliance, and nothing more.

>>dijit+C
> That this would affect businesses is of no consequence.

This is a historically unpopular government, where a significant proportion of their own membership is opposed to the government as well, dependent on business donors because its membership numbers has crashed.

I think the effect on businesses would make going after VPNs entirely dead in the water.

>>dijit+C
What about using ssh and a SOCKS5 proxy? I would be surprised if the UK government blocked that.

>>nemoma+(OP)
Why? They'll just force VPN providers to check users' ages.

>>nemoma+(OP)
I can be extremely wrong and so pardon me but I have only ever felt as if China/Iraq/Russia blocks vpn which are extremely authoritarian

if Britain does block vpn, it would look extremely authoritarian but yeah tbh, its looking the same right now too...

I do think that there is some level of bottom tech that needs to go unsupervised/unrestricted otherwise vpn's can fail (china?)

If however they restrict that level of tech too using (packet filtering?) etc., I don't really know, maybe there could be some side consequences too,like maybe some websites can stop working (like how china is cut off from the world from the outside websites primarily)

And honestly, the vpn providers can just change their techniques to be more sneaky and hope that UK govt. doesn't catch them and the UK govt. can try the vpn and find its techniques and then block them too

Its a cat and mouse game really.. The one where there is money incentive on big vpn players to play this game forever, so I wouldn't be too worried I guess.

What I am more worried about is that UK users might download free vpns or bad premium vpns which might make their phones botnets etc., so I would recommend proton vpn or mullvad but I don't want to recommend them too much because I don't want to imagine these products turning bad if a lot of people use it. (enshittenification)

>>Ray20+A5
I don't think proton or mullvad would let it slide so easily?

>>Pontif+24
Honestly as long as you can connect two pcs together, you can theoretically create a proxy.

Its theoretically possible to create a proxy from one pc to another using iroh/quic/(dumbpipe, which got like 880 upvotes I think on HN and I think is trending which is nice)

I feel like Its a cat and mouse game but that's just my 2 cents