> must not host, share or permit content that encourages use of VPNs to get around age checks. The government has also told the BBC it would be illegal for platforms to do so

Holy. Crap. I knew the UK was going off the deep end with these laws, but this actually looks like China-level government reach.

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Ms-J 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Ignore the government crying. It is irrelevant when we spread the tech to get around their useless spying laws.

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pas 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

next step is to try to make VPNs illegal (or require age verification for them, of course)

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zarzavat 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

You need to introduce an invasive great firewall before you can effectively ban VPNs, since there's so many different ways to hide traffic.

Unlike banning porn, banning VPNs has no political value because the technically inept voters who support these age verification policies don't know what a VPN is.

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miki123211 3 days ago | parent [-]

> You need to introduce an invasive great firewall before you can effectively ban VPNs

If you're China, yes. If you're a large and powerful western country, not so much.

The way to do it would be through the concept of "data laundering." Just like the US does with money laundering, the government would publish a list of all organizations and individuals engaged in the practice. All companies operating in that country would need to (globally) sever all ties with everybody who is on the list. Everybody else could choose between doing the same or ending up on the list themselves.

Only powerful countries could do this effectively, less powerful ones would just isolate themselves, just like China did. The US could definitely do it. The EU, UK, Japan and maybe India probably could, but it would be dicy. Everybody else would fail spectacularly.

	▲	zarzavat 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		UK prisons are almost full. The last thing the government needs is to jail every 14 year old who sets up wireguard for his friends.

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RiverCrochet 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Age verification for VPNs would be awesome. I would rather hand ID over to a VPN provider than individual sites I visit.

	▲	tacticus 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		This would ensure you couldn't tie an Identity to an activity\user on a service which is of course why it's not where they're going
	▲	lttlrck 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The VPN provider should hook into the existing government identify service.