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
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?