VPN Downloads Surge in UK as New Age-Verification Rules Take Effect (msn.com) 66
Proton VPN reported a 1,400 percent hourly increase in signups over its baseline Friday — the day the UK's age verification law went into effect. For UK users, "apps with explicit content must now verify visitors' ages via methods such as facial recognition and banking info," notes Mashable:
Proton VPN previously documented a 1,000 percent surge in new subscribers in June after Pornhub left France, its second-biggest market, amid the enactment of an age verification law there... A Proton VPN spokesperson told Mashable that it saw an increase in new subscribers right away at midnight Friday, then again at 9 a.m. BST. The company anticipates further surges over the weekend, they added. "This clearly shows that adults are concerned about the impact universal age verification laws will have on their privacy," the spokesperson said... Search interest for the term "Proton VPN" also saw a seven-day spike in the UK around 2 a.m. BST Friday, according to a Google Trends chart.
The Financial Times notes that VPN apps "made up half of the top 10 most popular free apps on the UK's App Store for iOS this weekend, according to Apple's rankings." Proton VPN leapfrogged ChatGPT to become the top free app in the UK, according to Apple's daily App Store charts, with similar services from developers Super Unlimited and Nord Security also rising over the weekend... Data from Google Trends also shows a significant increase in search queries for VPNs in the UK this weekend, with up to 10 times more people looking for VPNs at peak times...
"This is what happens when people who haven't got a clue about technology pass legislation," Anthony Rose, a UK-based tech entrepreneur who helped to create BBC iPlayer, the corporation's streaming service, said in a social media post. Rose said it took "less than five minutes to install a VPN" and that British people had become familiar with using them to access the iPlayer outside the UK. "That's the beauty of VPNs. You can be anywhere you like, and anytime a government comes up with stupid legislation like this, you just turn on your VPN and outwit them," he added...
Online platforms found in breach of the new UK rules face penalties of up to £18mn or 10 percent of global turnover, whichever is greater... However, opposition to the new rules has grown in recent days. A petition submitted through the UK parliament website demanding that the Online Safety Act be repealed has attracted more than 270,000 signatures, with the vast majority submitted in the past week. Ministers must respond to a petition, and parliament has to consider its topic for a debate, if signatures surpass 100,000.
X, Reddit and TikTok have also "introduced new 'age assurance' systems and controls for UK users," according to the article. But Mashable summarizes the situation succinctly.
"Initial research shows that VPNs make age verification laws in the U.S. and abroad tricky to enforce in practice."
The Financial Times notes that VPN apps "made up half of the top 10 most popular free apps on the UK's App Store for iOS this weekend, according to Apple's rankings." Proton VPN leapfrogged ChatGPT to become the top free app in the UK, according to Apple's daily App Store charts, with similar services from developers Super Unlimited and Nord Security also rising over the weekend... Data from Google Trends also shows a significant increase in search queries for VPNs in the UK this weekend, with up to 10 times more people looking for VPNs at peak times...
"This is what happens when people who haven't got a clue about technology pass legislation," Anthony Rose, a UK-based tech entrepreneur who helped to create BBC iPlayer, the corporation's streaming service, said in a social media post. Rose said it took "less than five minutes to install a VPN" and that British people had become familiar with using them to access the iPlayer outside the UK. "That's the beauty of VPNs. You can be anywhere you like, and anytime a government comes up with stupid legislation like this, you just turn on your VPN and outwit them," he added...
Online platforms found in breach of the new UK rules face penalties of up to £18mn or 10 percent of global turnover, whichever is greater... However, opposition to the new rules has grown in recent days. A petition submitted through the UK parliament website demanding that the Online Safety Act be repealed has attracted more than 270,000 signatures, with the vast majority submitted in the past week. Ministers must respond to a petition, and parliament has to consider its topic for a debate, if signatures surpass 100,000.
X, Reddit and TikTok have also "introduced new 'age assurance' systems and controls for UK users," according to the article. But Mashable summarizes the situation succinctly.
"Initial research shows that VPNs make age verification laws in the U.S. and abroad tricky to enforce in practice."
Good on them (Score:2, Troll)
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We know.
Labelling Palestine action as a terrorist group was appalling. Ama now the police seem keen on crashing down on anyone mentioning Palestine at all, and the government assists to be happy to let them.
Can't wait to be rid of Starmer though unfortunately there are worse people waiting in the wings, so careful what you wish for.
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I'm with the govt on that one. I don't want to see dicks either.
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Re:Soon in britain... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep, along with the slogan "Only terrorists and CSAM pervs use VPNs".
Sadly, the UK is just one of the first-world countries using "won't someone think of the children" as an excuse for usurping free access to the internet and freedom of speech. Australia's eSafety commissioner has already set the wheels in motion for very similar legislation there and even New Zealand is now seriously considering following along.
Nothing gets a government more excited than the prospect of suppressing dissent and opposition to their narratives. Censoring and restricting access to the internet is the ultimate tool for doing this. When the government gets to dictate what constitutes "harmful material" and has the ability to suppress that information we then live in a totalitarian state.
Only those with something to hide have anything to fear from freedom of information and freedom of speech. How strange therefore, that so many Western governments are now rushing to implement these restrictions on our freedoms and our privacy.
In the UK they've even set up a special police squad to monitor social media for anyone who might be challenging the government narrative and as we've already seen, they're prepared to let violent offenders out of prison early so as to make room for those who have said "hurty words" on the internet.
The world is going to hell in a handbasket and as an old hippy from the 1970s it appalls me that so many of those who will be so badly affected by this are simply doing nothing to push back. Perhaps governments are buoyed by the way so many so passively accepted the diktats of the pandemic and they've realized that the general population has no fight in them and are simply looking for more shorts on YouTube, more Reels on Facebook and some Marvell movies.
We deserve the government we get I suppose :-(
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Not really. And saying things like "hurty words on the internet" makes you sound like a pillock.
They are locking people up for a long time for non violent protests in the physical world. This has nmoved into giving the police a free pass to harass, arrest and intimidate protestors who cares about certain topics. Even ones who are both non violent and completely non disruptive.
None of that was in service of "think of the children" and last I checked VPNs are legal in the UK, but you know protesting barely i
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You mean the idiots that broke into a military base?
https://www.reuters.com/busine... [reuters.com]
The slow decline of the UK is hilarious.
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Partially. It started with cracking down on just stop oil with outrageous sentences and blocking various legal defences. The idiots as you say are many things, but terrorists aren't one of them. I'm also regferring to the guy who was arrested for holding up a cartoon printed out from a satirical newspaper, and the person harassed by armed police for holding a "stop genocide in Palestine" sign.
The slow decline of the UK is hilarious
Don't try and turn this into some sort of stupid chest beating "America fuck
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Muslims are already 6.5% of the UK population. It's gonna be 15% in 30 years and 30% 30 years after that. Your country is already gone you just haven't realized it yet. But don't worry your kids will realize it when they forced to wear a Hijab or get beaten walking through a Muslim neighborhood.
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Oh you're one of those racists. Should have realised.
The government is cracking down on basic freedoms and your first thought is... Muslims.
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Islam is not a race. It's a pedophile worshiping cult. Happy to sort that out for you.
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Well, they still have a king. A KING! What do you expect?
Re:Soon in britain... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, they still have a king. A KING! What do you expect?
A king with infinitely less power than the one in the oval office. Just saying.
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We have guy that's nominally a king but lacks most kingly powers. You have a guy that's nominally a president and not a king, but is being given free rei(g)n to act as a king with literal sanctioned impunity by your Supreme Court. Our government has more effective checks on its power than yours does.
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In the UK they've even set up a special police squad to monitor social media for anyone who might be challenging the government narrative
Bollocks. Name it.
and as we've already seen, they're prepared to let violent offenders out of prison early so as to make room for those who have said "hurty words" on the internet.
They're letting prisoners out slightly earlier, i.e. parole after 40% of the full sentence instead of 50%. "They" are doing this because the previous government's actions had left a prison system that only had room for a few hundred more prisoners in the entire fucking country.
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let's not so soon forget: from "Thursday April 30 2020, 5.00pm BST, The Times"
Police have fielded nearly 200,000 calls from members of the public snitching on neighbours or reporting other lockdown breaches, it emerged yesterday.
House parties, public loitering and other coronavirus-related concerns are being swiftly reported to police, who have now issued more than 9,000 lockdown fines in England and Wales.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/po... [thetimes.com]
That 1984 was written by a Brit about a future Britain was surprising to me when i found out, but over the decades i understand more why.
Re:Soon in britain... (Score:4, Informative)
1. That wasn't what the OP was referring to
2. That wasn't monitoring social media, it was acting on reports from the public
3. That wasn't about "challenging the government narrative", it was about breaching public health rules in the same way that curling one out on the pavement will get you in trouble
What the OP was referring to was this news report. I don't think this is confirmed yet, however.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/art... [bbc.co.uk].
"An elite police unit is being set up to monitor social media posts for anti-migrant material as part of efforts to prevent possible riots, according to The Sunday Telegraph. It says details of the National Internet Intelligence Investigations team emerged in a letter to MPs from policing minister Dame Diana Johnson. But the plan been criticised by opposition politicians and free speech campaigners - with Big Brother Watch telling the paper that resources should be put into physical policing rather than what it calls 'Orwellian units.' "
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Heh, :D
Special Police Squad!
I'd pay to see that movie
Sorry, I take laughs where I can get them.
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VPN usage requires ID verification.
It might even get worse. Various parts of the UK political establishments has been talking about banning VPNs for a few years now because they can be used to bypass the governments various internet regulations (including age verification). If enough people end up using a VPN to access their p0rn, those proposals might be reintroduced. Exactly how one would block a VPN service from offering service to customers in the UK is not really clear, but I doubt the politicians care about the details.
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Well, only a week and a half ago on /. we were talking about the Russian law criminalizing certain searches...
https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
Let me fix that for you (Score:5, Insightful)
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The Online Safety Act is much broader, for sure, and catches a lot more types of material. But I'm sure the proponents are pleased that the most memorable thing that's caught is something that people are often embarrassed to admit using.
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It's not just porn. Some Reddit communities for LGBTQ people have been caught up in it, despite having no adult content at all. Trolls report them and Reddit's management of this is fairly bad.
I expect there are already large numbers of phishing sites claiming to need you to upload a photo of your ID to verify your age. The more sites adopt it, the more people will get used to automatically handing over their ID without thinking.
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Wouldn’t it be nice to see some trolling the other way: the Mail, GB News, Reform, the EDL, Tate, etc — all of them should be feasible to concern-troll under this legislation.
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That's an interesting idea. The Mail in particular does publish a lot of soft porn.
There's gotta be some line about . . . (Score:2)
"age-ian porn" but I just can't find it.
End of anonymity (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:End of anonymity (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not so concerned about privacy as I am about security. I'm sick of every web site turning into a gated community while all my data goes through a dozen 3rd-party vendors all in the name of keeping me safe. Facial recognition? Banking info? Photo ID? Fuck off.
Same thing with ad blockers. I can tolerate and ignore ads. The problems is that the ads go way beyond that, trying to break into my browser and share every scrap of data with dozens of other vendors. I've always seen ad blockers as a security tool. They can beg all they want, but I refuse to turn it off.
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Exactly this. I am absolutely certain that lots of people in the UK are now going to have their details stolen and abused, and the harms will be compounded by the embarrassment of having to admit that it was for the purposes of watching porn. I mean, sharing passport details with some dodgy porn website based overseas is the exact opposite of Online Safety, but you'll get scant sympathy from politicians, you may end up having a very difficult conversation with your partner, and you will never get the press
Re: End of anonymity (Score:1)
New Age Verification (Score:4, Funny)
I'm not in the UK, but I do download New Age Music.
We've had this in Florida for awhile (Score:3)
All the complaining about it online turned out to be impotent rage (pardon the pun). As near as I can tell, people just did the damn age checks or signed up for a VPN and that was the end of it.
There's that old joke about if they removed porn from the internet, all that'd be left is a page saying "bring back the porn!" Well, it turns out that the wankers/fappers/gooners/[whatever euphemism the kids are calling it these days] are just a vocal minority and political backlash is negligible.
Re: We've had this in Florida for awhile (Score:4, Interesting)
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That's really the important distinction here though - it's about access to free porn.
I'd assume that signing up for a paid account meets the age check requirements, so it would seem the sites are just losing the freeloaders. Sure, that'll eventually bite them in the ass when they can't use free explicit content as a means of attracting new potential customers, but the immediate negative effect on their revenue is probably not that significant.
At any rate, I'd have to wonder how profitable it really is to r
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Not just free. The perception (real or not) of being anonymous. Big difference.
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And you honestly don't understand how loss leaders work?
"such as people uploading content that is underage and/or non-consensual"
ah yes, a concern troll. Never mind.
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Not just free. The perception (real or not) of being anonymous. Big difference.
The second you sign up for a paid account you've ceased to be anonymous. These sort of age verification laws don't affect people who have paid access to porn sites.
And you honestly don't understand how loss leaders work?
I specifically did say that free content is mostly used in the context of attracting new paid customers. However, a lot of businesses get by just fine without giving away free samples, so it may not be the end of the world for paid adult sites if the freebies go away.
ah yes, a concern troll.
If hosting unverified user-provided content wasn't a huge legal problem, there
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Ask the mobile gaming industry how they'd feel about losing their "freeloaders", they welcome them with open arms and wish for more. At worst they cost pennies and in reality their value simply isn't the immediate kind that shows up in MBA charts.
Freemium gaming is just weird in that they're trying to find "whales" - people who spend ungodly amounts of money on the game. Their whole business model depends on getting as many copies of their game in front of as many eyeballs as possible, in the hopes that someone has the right mix of addictive personality and pocketbook size that it pays off for them.
Porn is mostly not like that. Yeah, there's purchasable tokens on adult webcam sites, where the entertainers work for "tips" and the site takes a cut o
What pisses me off (Score:3)
I didn't particularly care if my kid looked at internet porn and they turned out just fine. I also sat them down and made sure they understood how to handle sex so I didn't have to worry about grandchildren coming out of nowhere.
That's how I raised my kid and I don't particularly like my government butting in on that. Never mind the hundreds of other reasons not to allow the government to directly censor the int
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"Think of the children" really was just the excuse. The people who passed these age check laws just have a problem with porn. The actual fallout from it though, wasn't really worth lighting the torches and sharpening the pitch forks over.
"Free" porn sites have mostly gone to shit ever since they realized it's just too much a liability hosting user-provided content. The credit card companies threatened to cut them off permanently, since advertising/sponsorships/etc. alone wasn't enough to remain profitabl
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political backlash is negligible because nobody wants to look bad by admitting they like porn lol.
are you really that naive?
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Almost as bad as a politician admitting they like money too
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It did nothing to protect kids from adult material. It just moved the majority porn outside Florida jurisdiction and unfortunately kids will find the not so tame sites.
Full disclosure? (Score:3)
I demand that UK MPs declare any interests they have in VPN companies. Perhaps the real agenda here is far more personal than we might think and maybe there's many a fortune being made within the halls of power as a result of this new legislation :-)
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Or this was pushed from the states, where someone has stakes.
We saw rent-a-mob prolifers protesting. Not at all surprised if this was pushed from outside.
Average age of VPN downloaders? (Score:1)
Re: Average age of VPN downloaders? (Score:3)
Only criminals and terrorists would use a VPN. What a horrible time, theyshould try those teenagers as adults.
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horrible crime.
Who would have thought (Score:3)
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Because all the candidates are morons.
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You have to be a moron to run for office.
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Lord Buckethead wants a word
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George Carlin said it best: "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."
And we let everyone here vote, regardless of education level or ability to reason. No test to vote, nothing.
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yet he never clarifies if the average follows a classic bell curve, otherwise, wouldn't it be "think how stupid the median person is ..."
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They have passed age verification crap here in Australia and its not exactly something that has any kind of real support from the electorate The politicians who passed it are most definitely not morons and I doubt most of the 5.3 million people who voted for them at the last election are either.
Both sides of politics support the laws so its not like I could have voted for the other guy and made any difference. And anyone who comes out against the laws is painted as being OK with kids seeing "bad stuff" onli
Just like China (Score:2)
Everyone uses VPNs to bypass the Great Wall and get news from the outside world. Sounds like Britain's moving in the same direction. What a sobering thought!
Meanwhile... (Score:1)
All BBC news programs are fixated on those critics saying the rules don't go far enough, and totally ignoring this part of the debate. And the rules aren't even vaguely stopping non-age-verified access to porn. I did my usual search for my usual type of porn every day since the rules came into force and have not been asked to do age verification once. This is just completely pointless. I don't want 11 year olds watching videos of people having sex, it's not good for them. I don't want teenagers watching por