Privacy

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

submitted 5 days ago by freedickpics@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

55 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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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[–] ftbd@feddit.org 10 points 3 days ago (3 children)

VPN technology will never be banned, as most companies rely on it heavily, e.g. for remote work. The only thing I could see is ISPs keeping a blacklist of known addresses of commercial VPN providers, but that seems like an uphill battle

[–] sqgl@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

A company can run their own VPN server. A third party need not be involved. The commercial VPN service providers can therefore be blocked by government without affecting those businesses.

[–] ftbd@feddit.org 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yes. By 'VPN technology' I mean e.g. wireguard, openVPN, which are infeasible to ban since companies probably use the same software stack.

[–] sqgl@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I don't know what a software "stack" is but government can packet sniff to see if that kind of software is used but the vendors in this cat and mouse game apparently can sometimes fool the packet sniffers.

China cannot block all VPN's so it is looking good for us geeks. However we need to educate the masses.

[–] utopiah@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago

However we need to educate the masses.

Well that's kind of the earlier point, the working masses already know. What they might not understand is that they can use a VPN outside of the office and how it benefits them.

[–] IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

Companies like Akamai already do this to an extent. My employer is an Akamai customer, and they’ve offered this service to us in the past when we saw a lot of malicious traffic originating from commercial VPN providers.

[–] Jason2357@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 days ago

There are already (crappy) ip blocklists available specifically for retail VPN providers. They don't include corporate vpn providers because capitalism. Anonymizing VPN services have limited IP blocks that are easily tracked.