UK PEOPLE: this is REALLY IMPORTANT.

[simon@gotosocial.grnwds.uk]

@cstross I don't doubt for a moment that the big age verification shops have smelled blood in the water and have geared up their lobbying everywhere and told our technologically challenged governments that it's frictionless and completely secure.

[simonzerafa@infosec.exchange]

@cstross

Makes you wonder how all these remote workers will manage without a VPN connection to their employers IT infrastructure

[christineburns@mastodon.green]

@only_ohm @dan @jaawerth @cstross @Nicovel0 That was my first thought, given that the whole idea of distributed working across a company’s office locations and working from home relies on virtual private networking. VPNs are not just for concealing your current location. Modern business life relies on them. Otherwise we’re back to leased lines.

[j12i@weirder.earth]

boost with CW: ukpol, OSA

[aliengasmask@mas.to]

@oschonrock @cstross but how do you prevent ip tracking by advertisers without a vpn? Vpns are necessary to close off that last bit of data.

[oschonrock@mastodon.social]

@aliengasmask @cstross

ip tracking is not "the last bit of data"..it's the first. Advertisers are much smarter than that. This is one of the myths perpetuated by VPN vendors.

If you care, TOR browser will help with many more of their tricks. (Still Not all... If you need proper anonymity use "tails" and proper op-sec)

[only_ohm@mas.to]

@christineburns @dan @jaawerth @cstross @Nicovel0

Employers are (unfortunately, IMO) required to collect employees' official identity documents for immigration control purposes anyway, so presumably even if the legislation had applied to workplace VPNs, age verification there would have been easy.

[only_ohm@mas.to]

@jaawerth @dan @cstross @Nicovel0

In a sense, inexactitude is good, because the Human Rights Act requires the courts to interpret all other legislation, as far as possible, in a way compatible with the ECHR rights, and all else being equal, greater vagueness will enable them to do that better.

[pionir@masto.bike]

@cstross

Good luck to the government making every company register every adhoc vpn between sites, or even my home Tailscale to my parents...

[ulrich_the_elder@thecanadian.social]

@oschonrock @cstross @Fonant @PeterSommerlad Blair being slightly less horrible is not a reason to have a fucking tory lead the labour party. The labour party when led by a tory is the tory party.

[oschonrock@mastodon.social]

@Ulrich_the_elder @cstross @Fonant @PeterSommerlad

I don't necessarily disagree, but you sound like one of those boring people who see everything in black and white.

So I am not engaging with that.

[woo@fosstodon.org]

@cstross Only if I want to access content that's not appropriate for under-16s. If I did, I'd watch TV. I think I heard a Labour minister celebrating that compulsory age-checks on pr0n sites had greatly reduced consumption. There goes another successful UK industry. I wonder what the punters did with their sexual frustration instead? MPs can have that question free, to ask at PMQs.

[cstross@wandering.shop]

@woo Weirdly, VPN users rose by *almost exactly* the same number as the fall in age-verified porn users. Fancy that!