Privacy

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

submitted 1 week 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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[–] artyom@piefed.social 17 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

Lots of places are applying that sort of regulation already. Problem is, how do you know which IPs are VPNs? There are some obvious ways, and many people block some VPNs already but you can't block every VPN. I can spin up a VPN right now and open it up to users in other countries. It's impossible.

The gov could theoretically maintain a repository of "known" VPNs that they could require sites to block, though. They could even force them to be blocked at the DNS level. This would probably be fairly effective.

But that's also most certainly going to be abused as well.

[–] filcuk@lemmy.zip 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Same as the stupid age verification, it will funnel people away from legitimate services to dodgy ones.

[–] Jason2357@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 week ago

Small scale version. I heard from some kids that they wanted to play Roblox at school. IT had blocked it on the Wifi. The kids advice to each other was “go on the play store, search VPN, and install whatever one is free.” - IT absolutely isn't making those kids safer.

[–] Jason2357@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They are only interested in retail, anonymizing VPNs. If you spin up your own VPN you are still 1:1 linked to that IP address. If you use a work VPN, they fully track everything. The anonymizing ones that dont track users and share an IP between many users are a threat to mass surveilance.

[–] artyom@piefed.social 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

They are only interested in retail, anonymizing VPNs

Okay, and how will they know which ones those are?

If you spin up your own VPN you are still 1:1 linked to that IP address

I don't think you read that entire sentence. I wasn't talking about spinning one up for my personal use.

[–] IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Not to mention that it’s trivial to change your IP on most cloud providers. So if a VPN provider is using a cloud service for some of its gateways then it can quickly remember them if necessary.