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

  • Zerush@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    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.

    • PortNull@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 day ago

      I forgot about the free VPN services. Good point. But yes, the government shouldnt be the ones raising our kids. As you said, this is all about control and getting information. Nothing more.