Privacy

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Could VPNs Be 'Banned'? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 days ago by freedickpics@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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With the UK apparently floating ideas of a VPN ban it's got me worried about the future of anonymity online. Now people have already pointed out that a VPN ban doesn't make sense because of all the legitimate uses of one and wouldn't even be enforceable anyway, but that got me thinking.

What if governments ordered websites (such as social media sites) to block traffic originating from a VPN node? Lots of sites already do this (or restrict your activity if they detect a VPN) to mitigate spam etc. and technically that wouldn't interfere with "legitimate" (in the eyes of the gov) VPN usage like logging onto corporate networks remotely

It's already a pain with so many sites either blocking you from access or making you jump through a million captchas using VPNs now. I'm worried it's about to get a whole lot worse

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[–] Kirk@startrek.website 28 points 2 days ago (3 children)

It's theoretically possible but difficult to actually do. China has a large central government and surveillance state, VPNs are essentially banned there, and yet a large percentage of the population uses them daily to the point where it's commonplace.

[–] Lfrith@lemmy.ca 14 points 2 days ago

If China can't do it then nobody can. I'll only be worried if China manages to successfully block out VPN use in their country.

[–] Auli@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I still believe they let it happen. Could be wrong but it reminded me of the Machines in the Matrix.

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Snowflake or steganographic comunication, works even in North Corea, encrypted messages are not a solution, because they always cause suspicion in countries with strong surveillance and censorship. VPN are not the solution either, even in occidental coutries, there are a lot of webs which are not accesible with a VPN or Proxy, mostly streaming sites, eg. Rakuten and others.

[–] Auli@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That is not effective either and is easy to break. At least steganographic I know nothing about snowflake but if it's similar it would be trivial.

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago

Steganographic messages are pretty save, not so because they are very difficult to reveal, but if they see an innocent selfie, a photo from a kitten or an mp3 from a famous song, they don't think tat it can be a hidden message and don't cause further interests, like an encrypted unreadable message do. Snowflake is another thing, often used by journalists in totalitary countries. https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity24/presentation/bocovich