995
UK households could face VPN 'ban' after use skyrockets following Online Safety Bill
(www.birminghammail.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2025
995 points (99.0% liked)
Technology
73534 readers
2568 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It would have been smarter for the UK to mandate that every ISP must provide a family filter for free as part of their service. Something that is optional and can be turned on or off by the account holder but allows parents to set filters (and curfews) if they want. They could even require that ISPs require new signups to affirm if they want it on or off by default so people with families are more likely to start with it enabled.
The problem is that content filters don't work all that well in the age of https everywhere. I mean, you can block the pornhub.com domain, that's fairly straightforward ... but what about reddit.com which has porn content but also legitimately non-porn content. Or closer to home: any lemmy instance.
I think it would be better if politicians stopped pearl clutching and realized that porn perhaps isn't the worst problem in the world. Tiktok and influencer brainrot, incel and manosphere stuff, rage baiting social media, etc. are all much worse things for the psyche of young people, and they're doing exactly jack shit about that.
That's a problem is for ISPs and content providers to figure out. I don't see why the government has to care other than laying out the ground rules - you must offer and implement a parental filter for people who want it for free as part of your service. If ISPs have to do deep packet inspection and proxy certs for protected devices / accounts then that's what they'll have to do.
As far as the government is concerned it's not their problem. They've said what should happen and providing the choice without being assholes to people over 18 who are exercising their rights to use the internet as they see fit.
No, there are very good technical reasons why this approach can't work.
There is no deep packet inspection on properly encrypted TLS connections. I know TLS termination and interception and recertifying with custom certificates is a thing, but even if it were feasible to implement this on millions of client computers that you don't own, it is an absolutely god awful idea for a million reasons and much worse for privacy and security than the age-gate problem you're trying to work around.
Actually it can be done and is being done. Software like Fortigate Firewall can do deep packet inspection on encrypted connections by replacing certs with their own and doing man in the middle inspection. It requires the browser has a root CA cert that trusts the certs issued by the proxy but that's about it. Filtering software could onboard a new device where the root cert could be installed.
And if Fortigate can do it then any filtering software can too. e.g. a kid uses their filtered device to go to reddit.com, the filter software substitutes reddit's cert for their own and proxies the connection. Then it looks at the paths to see if the kid is visiting an innocuous group or an 18+ group. So basic filtering rules could be:
This is eminently possible for an ISP to implement and do so in a way that it ONLY happens when a user opts into it on a registered device while leaving everything open if they did not opt into it.
And like I said this is an ISP problem to figure out. The government could have set the rules and walked away. And as a solution it would be far more simple that requiring every website to implement age verification.
I know how it works, so spare me the explanation. It's not that as easy as you make it out to be. OS and browser companies are actively fighthing "rogue" root CAs and making it harder and harder to use custom CAs, especially on mobile devices.
And for good reason, because by accepting a rogue root CA that's not your own, you're basically undermining the whole trust system that SSL is based on and surrendering all your online privacy and security to the government and your ISP. Whoever has control over that custom root CA has the keys to your online life.
Rolling such a system out countrywide is utter madness.
You obviously didn't know how it works if I had to explain it was already possible. And I am not aware of any mobile device that prevents you installing a new root CA.
And it isn't "madness", it's a completely workable way to offer filtering for people who want it for kids and have no filtering or censorship for anybody else. It is a vastly better option than onerously demanding adults provide their identity to random and potentially adult themed websites where they could be victims of identity theft or extortion
If you read my comment properly, you'll see that I wrote: "I know TLS termination and interception and recertifying with custom certificates is a thing"
Yes it is. TLS interception should never be normalized because it breaks the chain of trust upon which TLS is based. It can be useful in some situations, like the fortigate firewall where you control the certificate, but ISPs nor the government should be trusted to wield this power over virtually the whole country. It is a very slippery slope.
On Android, apps can't install their own root CA. The user has to manually download it, then jump through a bunch of hoops and deeply nested menus to install it and in the process ignore all the scary warnings that their communication may be intercepted if they install and trust this certificate, and (at least on Pixel phones) they get a permanent warning in their notification tray that someone may be eavesdropping on them. Which is correct.
I'm strongly against government mandated age gates myself, but you're objecting for the wrong reasons. You're not providing your identity to the adult website. You're providing it to the third party identity verifier, who then certifies to the adult website that you are an adult without passing on your actual identity. Keep this in mind when you're arguing against it, because pro-age-gater puritans can use it to undermine your argument.
I object to it first and foremost on principle. I shouldn't have to request permission from a third party or the government to do perfectly normal legal adult things in the privacy of my own home.
Secondly, there is still a privacy problem at the "identity verifier". They may swear up and down that they do not store my identity data, but there is no way to prove that one way or another so I cannot trust that my data can't be leaked through them.
Thirdly, when viewing adult content, I don't want there to be any association between my real identity and the adult content whatsoever, even through a third party, and I don't want there to be anything that uniquely identifies me.
Finally, I object to the (re)demonization of all things sexual in our societies. We seem to be backsliding into puritanism under the guise of protecting the children, while we're doing nothing to protect them from real actually harmful online things that are damaging the younger generations beyond repair.
I have a Gen Z stepson, and all the ways in which he is fucked up by the online world (no attention span, permanent online-ness, no real world friends, always seeking instant gratification, unrealistic expectations about life, an overly materialistic worldview, plenty of manosphere bullshit, ... ) have precious little do do with viewing porn.
@arc99 @SpaceCadet thats basically allowing the Government to force the ISP's to build a solution which is able to sensor every content. Sorry there is alot of reasons why you should be against it.
PS: even your deep packet inspection falls short to end 2 end encryption / decryption ...
Deep packet inspection already happens on encrypted traffic (Fortigate Firewall) so it's eminently possible for filtering software to do the same.
@arc99 please inform yourself about end to end encryption and decryption.
All i say is you haven't understand what is happening on this firewall and what this firewall can do and what the firewall can't do.
I'm intimately aware about what it can and cannot do. And it can intercept and man in the middles any https traffic
@arc99 but end 2 end encryption is not by default https traffic ;) ssh / vpn are protocolls ( end 2 end encryption, decryptio) and this firewall can't deep inspect while this protocoll can easy tunnel other tunnels.
I really do not know what you are saying. I have just told you that Fortigate Firewall can and does do deep packet inspection on https connections. It does so by man in the middle proxying. If one filter / proxy can do it then any other could too. There would be ways for kids to circumvent this, e.g via VPN but that is no different than with age verification.
@arc99
I said (picture) your deep inspection falls short to real end 2 end. You said your firewall can break end 2 end ... nope they can't and never will and you exactly said this in your last post too. (Sidenote -> i can gpg a text and post it public even with https .. for 99% it will be giberish and only the person who got the right key material will be able to read it ) ... so using deep package inspection to identify something you want to protect kids from is just a lie ...
I honestly do not know what you are saying. Deep packet inspection through a firewall that does mitm interception demonstrably happens. It is not up for debate.
@arc99 you still don't understand end 2 end encryption. Yes man in the middle decryption can be done. First for this to happen you need to accept the certificates of the firewall ( which in terms of a home PC you can't force anyone to do ). Second even if you can decrypt the https packets , you can still put an additional layer on top which only you and the reciever has the keys too.
To give you an example you can easy write down a base64 encoded binary blob in any text field on a website. If this binary blob has been encrypted before noone will be able to tell what is inside.
So breaking https is useless if someone really wants to hide informations. So no your deep packet inspection is totally useless. The only thing you know is that someone did put strange stuff in a text on a website.
No, YOU don't understand end to end encryption, and you don't understand browsers. You say you could "write down a base64 encoded binary blob on a website". Yes you could and how do you decrypt it? The asnwer is with a key (asymmetric or symmetric) that the recipient must have in memory of the receiving software - the browser that the filter has already intercepted and compromised. So "moar layers" is not protection since the filter could inject any JS it likes to reveal the inner key and/or conversation. It could do this ad nauseum and the only protection is how determined the filter is.
But this is also a nonsense argument just on a practical level. The problem is kids connecting to adult websites, or websites with some adult content. The filter doesn't need to do much - either block a domain outright, or do some DPI to determine from the path what part of the website the browser is calling. The government thinks it reasonable that every single website that potentially hosts adult content should capture proof of identity of adults. I contend that really the issue is kids having access to those websites at all, and that proxies can and would be a far more effective way to control the issue without imposing on adults. No solution is perfect, but a filter is a far more effective way than entrusting some random website with personal information. Only this week somebody found an app that was storing ids in a public S3 bucket compromising all those users. Multiply that by hundreds, thousands of websites all needing verification and this will not be the last compromise by any means.
@arc99 the same way as you did encrypt it ??? with ggp ?
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/35584461/gpg-encryption-and-decryption-of-a-folder-using-command-line
???? the needed certificate are exchanged by for example a matrix / telegram or personal ????
And don't underestimate kids ... Or better asked yourself how did they get porn in the 80s and 90s ??? ( and yes they did )
PS: and honestly imho this hole "protection talk" is totally nonesense or are parent's not anymore capable of protecting their kids? Tell my one reason why a kid < 16 should have access to internet without supervision ? An Emergency Call can still be done without internet.
This hole discussion is like if you would had let a Porn VHS in the 80's unlocked in the living room and your kid unsupervised for hours in the living room. Would have someone called in the 80's to audit if your porn has been stored kids savely you would have gone crazy.
PPS: Just because you don't have statistic's how many kids watched adult content in the 80's or 90's doesn't mean it didn't happen !!!