FTFY:
Lawmakers ~~Want to Ban VPNs—And They~~ Have No Idea What They're Doing
this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2025
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At some point we'll just have to tunnel IP over DNS, and then they can't block traffic without destroying the entire internet. Not that it'll dissuade them.
I see you and raise you this:
This method actually has bigger throughput if you need to transfer lot of data.
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pingfs
Now that's something I must try.
"Legislators Want to Ban the Internet"
Well, no, it wouldn't. The bods that make these decisions still live like it's 1950 and dream of an authoritarian future of masters and slaves.
What good is The Google or The AI when you're sipping champagne up an ivory tower or out on the ocean being waited on hand and foot on a gleaming yacht?
It will just be a few approved sites that you are allowed to visit, and just by chance those sites are the ones that pay the goverment the most! Those sites will have records in the approved DNS, that you can not change. Other DNS requests are blocked, along with everything else that isn't approved.
Welcome to:
People's Republic of America
美利坚人们共和国
Long Live Chairman Trump
Maybe he reign a thousand years!
/s
Wisconsin already blocks access to all goverment websites if you use a VPN. I can't even check the garbage collection schedule for my town. I always thought it was this misguided concept that they thought only "hackers" would want to be anonymous. It seems they are really working for the data brokers, who don't want anyone to be anonymous.
Sounds like a good time to deploy a bunch of small raspberry pi vpn nodes at local libraries and other free wifi spots. I don’t know enough about ip to know if they can track you past that first hop
Could it simply be that your VPN puts you in a region which Wisconsin doesn’t want to provide access? So if your current VPN server is in Vancouver, maybe Wisconsin blocks traffic from outside of WI or the US, because why should/would any legit “Vancouver” person need access to Wisconsin data?
Could be a Wisconsin resident away on a trip longer than intended, wants to check schedules before deciding to ask a friend to drag some of their bins to the kerb and back?
What's the benefit to WI in denying them access?
Soooo… screw the network of a bunch of companies I guess, lol. I have to use my work’s VPN while working from home, but the way they set it up I also have to use it while working at the office. This is far from a unique setup over here. If this happens to be the same in Wisconsin I have some bad news for them.
That's basically any modern network. There is no more trivial "inside our network" vs. "outside on the internet". Networks are segmented on a need-to-know principle. You can access some information from the public internet. Some other things can be accessed from the internet, but only on corporate devices, if your user AND device is whitelisted. And then you have one or more VPNs on top of that for more sensitive stuff. Also those VPNs may be "dynamic" in the sense that it may also be dependent on the user, device and authentication method what is currently accessible over that VPN connection.
Also schools. My kids state issued laptops use vpns to connect to the schools networks as well as in a true irony limit what sites they can access.
It's actually so limiting it's nearly impossible to print the required assignments on a printer in our home but that's a different rant.
Lawmakers Have No Idea What They're Doing
Sounds like a headline for literally every issue regarding technology.
Porn websites should just start blocking access for any lawmakers that are okay with this legislative garbage.
s/blocking access/releasing the viewing history of/
They might be using onlyfans
As usual. Our government, your government, totally clueless about how the internet works or what it actually is. And with all the money they waste every day, there seems to be no cent left to get some professional who could explain things on a politicians mental level. We've got people who successful teach computers to seniors, maybe politicians should hire some...
I think this is mostly a symptom of the gerontocracy. Most elected officials have not grown up with computers, which is already likely to make them incurious about them. Couple that with being in office so long, likely developing a very high opinion of themselves that they know best. I would guess a significant minority is actively hostile to learning anything about computers, so you can hire any professional to explain stuff with baby talk, it won't work on them. Combine that with the rest of the technologically illiterate politicians just being indifferent, and you get this kind of policy.
My home network is all under Mullvad for a few months now, and I've noticed that recently a lot of pages block it. I just get a 403 error and I need to disable it to access. Honestly I expect this to happen more and more, which is BS.
Is it due to geo-blocking?
I have noticed that some sites would load my local language version even if I point out original site. E.g. southpark.cc.com would stubbornly redirect to southpark.de no matter how you tried to trick it. And, of course, some content on some sites would also report that is is unavailable in my region.
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There's a genocide going on. It's not the porn degenerates, it's the moral religious people. Don't push this garbage onto children. At least wait until they're 25 and their brain is fully developed before you teach them that women are the problem, that little boys should be fondled by grown men, and that it's OK to commit a genocide against the people who pray to a different sky wizards than you.
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ah yes, every time they want to do something abhorrent, they cry "its for the children!" to immediately try and silence any critics.
Ok, so don’t use a vpn, just go to a proxy running in another country that is connected to a vpn?
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these people deserve a big FUCK YOU to the face, in front of an audience.
If I understood it correctly, per that legislation and given how the technology works, adult sites would have to block everybody coming to them from a known VPN exit point, not matter where the user actually is (because a site can't really tell were a user actually is when they're behind a VPN) to comply with it, meaning that it would impact everybody everywhere in the World using a VPN.
De facto Wisconcin's legilslature is trying to imposed their will not only on those who live in Wisconsin, not only on those who live anywhere in the US but on those who live anywhere in World.
Aaaaaaand I can switch to residential proxies, I can still appear from wherever the fuck I want.
You. Can't. Stop. This.
All this will do is cause actual criminals to hide it better, that is it.
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They understand what they're doing. They're treating the problem as a black box - they want to decide what you can do in the field where they are strong, making laws and rules as the (in their piss cockroach opinion) dominant apes in the crowd. They are breaking the technical possibility for you to avoid that. They don't see a problem with breaking it for everyone, because if some use they need as well is broken so, they can make an exception for themselves, it's in the domain of making rules too, and they can make punishments so gruesome that nobody will bother except for mafia and law enforcement, just like with heroine.
And the answer doesn't lie in protecting VPNs or making technical means to avoid them further, by using plentiful possible information channels in the standards comprising the Internet. The answer lies in dipping them face into their own shit and saying "don't do that again or I will kill you". Because it's a social, not technical, problem. It can be reduced to unauthorized people telling you what to do and you obeying.
If this passes I will simply add Wisconsin to my growing list of banned US states from accessing my website. That's assuming it's not already on there.
My IT experience is fading fast so can anyone explain this bit?
block the access of users connected via VPN
I'm running a Digital Ocean droplet on the other side of the Pond with my own, static IP. How could a site detect I'm using a VPN? Imgur blocks me if it's on. How do they know?!
Generally, they know you're using a VPN because of where your traffic is coming from.
They probably block Digital Ocean's IP pool as a whole as it's often a hub for cybercrime and it would only affect a fraction of users.
The thing is, VPNs won’t protect your privacy much. Browser fingerprinting technology has achieved its goal. True anonymity online is damn near impossible now.
VPNs are able to help circumvent authoritarian bullshit by making the traffic appear to come from somewhere else. So states that implement laws banning what is essentially protected speech aren’t able to really be effective in their efforts because the people that live there just route their traffic outside the state the have it all bounced back in. Banning VPNs would help them censor anything they consider porn.
That’s the real danger. A teenager jerking off is not the concern. It’s the excuse.
I wonder, what if we end run this with the cheap GPUs about to hit the market once the AI bubbles pop? Just set up a bunch of Remote Desktop instances people log in to pull shit up on and stream that to the browser. When they disconnect, nuke the container and pull the instance up again, route everything again. It’s basically Netflix of a remote session. And if they ban that, it would invoke the wrath of some incredibly powerful industries.
All because naked people are scary.
The thing is, VPNs won’t protect your privacy much. Browser fingerprinting technology has achieved its goal. True anonymity online is damn near impossible now.
except for traffic that does not come from a web browser at all. like API calls to download linux ISOs.
Linux distros are incredibly dangerous for children. They teach them they have options. It’s incredibly dangerous. We much protect them. For the ~~children~~ shareholders
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There are lots of companies selling data, just one of them is a list of known VPN IP addresses. Updated every X days. Just plug that into your service and it gets a lot harder, but still not impossible, to use with a VPN.
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Anyone know how to get started with Tor?
TOR Wikipedia page - explains the key concepts and gives a link to the website so you can download the Tor Browser.
Tails (Amnesiac OS) Wikipedia page - If you want the real Fort Knox solution to browsing something or sending something without anyone finding out. It's more of a process than downloading Tor Browser, but probably the most secure option possible for browsing the web. (The OS runs everything through the TOR network, is only retained in RAM, and wipes the RAM clean during shutdown)
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well, ultimately too many lawmakers, elected or not are "let them eat cake" people. Living in their own world, uncaring and unknowing about things they rule over. Too many are likely there for their own hubris, thinking how they are so excellent that they must deserve to be there and maybe to line their own pockets. Though obviously there are some that are genuinely competent, otherwise the whole thing would come crashing down too fast, but they are most likely quite suppressed in favor of the pieces of shit that care only about their own interests.
They COULD have consulted people who know about this, considered extensively if its good idea to do this or not and maybe even explain themselves why its necessary without resorting to propaganda and lies, such as how this is to "save the children". But they do not, because they dont care and they dont have to care.
Don't worry once this bites them in the ass by exposing something they have said is bad they will get themselves an exception.
How the fuck do they plan on monitoring VPN traffic? Isn't the whole point of a good privacy-oriented VPN is that they don't log traffic? How can they monitor something that doesn't exist?
It's not the logs or the data which they would be monitoring with an encrypted no-logs VPN. What they would be monitoring, presumably, would be the fact that you are using a VPN at all. That's also what they would be trying to block. They might try to block it by interfering with access to certain ports or blocking certain IP addresses, but there would be limits. Even China can't stop all VPN traffic to get around its firewalls.
That's not what the article summary is saying, though. To clarify my question, I'm referring to this part:
If it becomes law, Wisconsin could become the first state where using a VPN to access certain content is banned.
How are they going to enforce that? Assuming the VPN provider is doing their due-diligence, they have no way of knowing what kind of traffic is going through a privacy-based VPN when someone uses one.
It’s an age verification bill that requires all websites distributing material that could conceivably be deemed “sexual content” to both implement an age verification system and also to block the access of users connected via VPN.
They intend to make the websites enforce it.
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