this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2026
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60
UK government targets VPNs in new online safety consultation as Lords vote for ban (www.techradar.com)
submitted 3 days ago by floofloof@lemmy.ca to c/unitedkingdom@feddit.uk
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[–] IanTwenty@piefed.social 25 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Parliament itself recommends VPN use for its members:

Labour's Lord Knight acknowledged that VPNs could "undermine the child safety gains of the Online Safety Act" but warned that age-gating the apps could be "extremely problematic". He said:

"My phone uses a VPN, following a personal device cyber consultation offered by this Parliament. VPNs can make us more secure, and we should not rush to deprive children of that safety."

[–] YesButActuallyMaybe@lemmy.ca 16 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (4 children)

Someone eli5 please: how are they gonna know I’m using a vpn if I use port 80 or 443?

Edit: oh they are gonna require vpn providers to do age verification and force them to not do business with minors. That’s dumb

[–] deadcream@sopuli.xyz 9 points 3 days ago (2 children)

You think UK would be the first country to ban VPNs? There are thousands of talented and very committed computer scientists in authoritarian countries tirelessly working to enforce internet censorship. They discovered many wonderful technical solutions to this problem.

All the mainstream VPN protocols like OpenVPN and Wireguard don't even try to hide themselves and are easily detected no matter what port you use. They are useless if you country is seriously set to block VPNs.

There are different protocols specifically designed to circumvent censorship and they do so by masking their traffic to like something innocuous like HTTPS. However even they can be detected using advanced traffic analysis. For example, if a given machine only sends and receives HTTPS traffic to a single specific overseas server, it is safe to assume that it's not actually a genuine website traffic but a VPN masquerading as HTTPS.

There is special hardware that all users' traffic goes through that detects these patterns and automatically throttles/blocks these connections.

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

What if you were playing a browser game for hours? Wouldn't that also be HTTPS traffic to the same server all the time?

[–] deadcream@sopuli.xyz 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Maybe, depending on the game. But your OS and running programs will still be making http requests to various servers. Microsoft's, Google's, Steam's, etc. Modern devices and OSes phone home constantly. If you have VPN all your traffic will go through a single server (unless you configure split tunneling to use VPN only for certain sites) and that's easily detectable.

There also databases of known VPN IP addresses, and if you set up your own then analyzing hardware/software will still know see that you are communicating with a rented server in cloud and will flag you as suspicious.

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 2 points 3 days ago

At this point it sounds easier to rsync our porn collections with each other..

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Some P2P routing solution seems to be needed, along the lines of Tor or i2p but disguising its traffic. But no doubt they'll be after any P2P communications next.

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 5 points 3 days ago

Presumably they'd learn the IP addresses the VPN providers are using and watch for connections to those.

[–] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 4 points 3 days ago

China manages to figure it out using deep packet inspection.

Funnily enough, they don't fully ban them. Just randomly cut them off to inconvenience the user.

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Most of them do that too a degree anyway. Credit cards are only available to over 18s, so if you pay with one of those, that's your ID. I guess this is mostly for free VPNs (although I've never found one that was any good) and people paying with debit cards or crypto.

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 4 points 3 days ago

A lot of people in the UK don't have credit cards. Debit cards are fine and kids have those too. Dont Mullvad accept cash?

[–] Infernal_pizza@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Isn't this part of the same amendment that will make government spyware mandatory on all devices? So does that mean that part passed as well? VPNs are not the most concerning part here yet that's the only bit that seems to be getting reported

page 20

The “CSAM requirement” is that any relevant device supplied for use in the UK must have installed tamper-proof system software which is highly effective at preventing the recording, transmitting (by any means, including livestreaming) and viewing of CSAM using that device

So that means mandatory spyware and effectively makes alternative OS's/unlocked bootloaders illegal

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 9 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Are Linux, BSD, etc. about to become illegal in the UK? Good luck with that. It certainly seems to make GrapheneOS and all other privacy-preserving phone OSs illegal.

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 2 points 3 days ago

I wonder if we can get around that. Tamper proof in software? So device comes with Windows and you can't uninstall their crap It's tamper proof! But you can just remove Windows.

[–] danielquinn@lemmy.ca 11 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I will never get used to the comfort Britons appear to have with surveillance. I guess it's time to set up a Wireguard instance of my own in the Netherlands to proxy everything through.

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 4 points 3 days ago

It's not like we have a choice

[–] FishFace@piefed.social 0 points 3 days ago (2 children)

But id cards, which might actually be useful, are unthinkable!

[–] loops@feddit.uk 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The British will never ever ever accept ID cards.

[–] FishFace@piefed.social 2 points 3 days ago

That's what I'm saying yes

[–] Paddzr@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

Are they tho? anti ULEZ was driven hard due to cameras invading privacy. At least in the circles I've seen.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago

Goddamn, UK.