submitted 1 month ago by freedickpics@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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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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[-] Auli@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 month ago

They could ban VPNs and not play cat an mouse. I always think China allows some VPN use when they could stop it completely. I always think of the Matrix with the option of leaving.

[-] sqgl@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I had my Internet crippled in China in 2012 after I used Hamachi to log into my home computer in Australia.

The crippling got worse if I repeated my action eventually disabling the internet completely for about an hour.

I played this game a few times to pick up on the pattern.

this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2025

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