this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2025
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Privacy
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Though a VPN does not provide you with guaranteed anonymity, it only allows you to access webpages and local services as if you were at that physical location, or on that specific network.
Connecting to your work office VPN and browsing Facebook does not make you anonymous, it's just makes you look like you are sitting in the office.
I think you're missing the point. A brit without VPN has to use his actual digital ID to access pornhub, as in name, address, birthday, etc... With a VPN you can spoof your location and access pornhub without ID. This has nothing to do with masking your IP to browse the web.
And this is my point actually, what are they trying to ban, is it the use of a VPN completely, or is it for only VPN that spoof locations out of country. (Which is what allows someone to circumvent the age-id, at the moment.)
Now that being said I work with people in the UK and they VPN into our office for network access and project file access. Does anyone see how this could impact access for Brits working with global firms for example?
That's the whole point of the discussion: what does "VPN" mean in this context? Is it only these VPN providers that let you be elsewhere, or VPN technology and traffic in general. The prior could be limited by blocking traffic to specific IP addresses that belong to VPN providers, albeit in a very laborious and expensive cat and mouse game. The latter would affect all VPN traffic including that which is used to safely connect to work sites for example. Which would be stupid and damaging.
Even if VPN providers could be banned at IP level, what's stopping you from spinning up a host in another country, setting up wireguard on that?
I understand they are frustrated that their excellent child protection plans and user information gathering is so easy to circumvent, but their proposed solutions are just absurd.
If you have a VPN then chances are you have a credit card, which means you are an adult, which means you can access porn. The VPN is your age verification :)
No, there are free VPN out there where you don't need an creditcard (Windscribe, Proton, Calyx....), even if not, it can be a child on the PC from the parents. Anyway, age verification has only one reason, access and control of user data, nothing else. The resposability of the children is by the Parents and not by webpages or services, apart impossible to control the access by childrens, when they use the PC of the parents to websites which already have the ID from the adults. Nobody else as the parents can control it. Apart it isn't a rule which is worldwide, with countries without age control in their server, easy accesible from everywhere but out of the control by goverments.