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UK Mobile ISP Blocks VPN, Citing Access To Porn
New submitter santosh.k83 writes with this snippet: "TorrentFreak has learned that VPN provider iPredator is already blocked under the 'adult filter' of some, if not all, mobile providers. TorrentFreak has seen communication between the mobile provider GiffGaff and iPredator which makes it clear that the VPN's website is blocked because it allows kids to bypass the age restrictions. Based on the above it is safe to say that censorship is a slippery slope, especially without any oversight. VPNs are used for numerous purposes and bypassing age restrictions is certainly not the most popular one. If this holds up then proxy services and even Google's cache may soon be banned under the same guise."
You report all suspicious packets, yes?
You can switch off the blocking if you so wish on the giffgaff web site.
News at 11.
When are they going to figure out that they're not qualified to make public policy on technology matters? Censorship sucks (and doesn't work), filtering doesn't work. Here's a suggestion for you instead: How about you get parents to actually pay attention to what their kids are doing instead of making the internet tougher and more annoying to use for everyone?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Or the spooks have been putting a bit of pressure on the CEO's. You would be surprised what you can do with a bit of information regarding the lifestyle of board members of an ISP.
Its only a slippery slope if it had anything to with porn in the first place.
I thought the "point" of the filter was to make access to pornographic content opt-in? Wouldn't using a VPN like that just imply you're opting in?
Ban every possible means of bypassing an age filter.
VPN's
Google
Email
Facebook
See how popular it becomes.
Just give it time... remember, remember the 5th of November
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I can't imagine that anyone in the UK forces you to own a computer with an internet connection.
free speech tomorrow, its only a matter of time before the internet is dead (worldwide)
maybe pirate radio will become more popular again, and the free speech will flow over the airwaves, the pirate radio i hear lately is crappy music over static on shortwave, yeah, thats what i want to hear low fidelity music on shortwave when i have a nice stereo sitting right here in the room with me, pirate radio has gone to hell nowadays, what i want to hear on pirate radio is something i dont hear anywhere else, like news that is suppressed on mainstream, criticizing of the government that needs to be said but the mainstream is afraid to touch it
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
The more people will find $2/month VPS machines running OpenVPN.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
You guys voted for those idiots. They're not even idiots and no politicians would want to censor child porn themselves - the only reason they go that far is because of the idiocy of people in general.
Stop blaming the government for everything. Look at people around you. Listen to what most parents' opinions on various issues and you'll realize it.
Morons, most of them.
UK the censors. We who are about to censor salute you. /s
Don't be fooled. This is a blatant power-grab. A black-hat operation wrapped in a white cloak.
Living in South Korea (not North Korea, but the actual democractic South), and they're censoring stuff like crazy, and not just porn. Websites like Fark.com can't be accessed at the PC rooms, and I assume that's only going to get worse. If they follow suit with the UK and eliminate access to VPN (the current way to deal with the censoring), what are the ways to deal with this?
(PS: I'm not technologically literate -- it was a real coup just to get VPN working in the first place.)
Growing up in the 1990s I hit puberty right around the time the Internet exploded. I'm first hand evidence that *heavy use of pornography* is not indicative of anything harmful. I started masturbating to really creepy stuff at about 11 too. Creepy has good side effects for some people and there is nothing wrong with that. If anything it probably kept me sane in a world that shuns any sexual deviations.
On the outside I probably didn't seem that different. I had numerous short 'sexual' relationships. However without pornography I would have had a very depressing 'childhood'. I knew from a very early age (after puberty) that there was a near zero percent change I'd ever find a compatible mate and for 17 years I was alone. I gave up dating before a I even really started despite a dozen or so relationships over the years. Statistically there was a near zero chance of finding someone with sufficiently similar tastes (this is after you take into account the Internet and knowledge of how to use a search engine).
One day though I came across someone in the most unlikely of places whom I found interesting. Both sexually attractive (rarity for me) AND with near-identical interests. At first I didn't do anything as it was statistically unlikely they would be in the same boat as me. After 4 days or so I decided to contact them anyway. I took chances occasionally over the years-always being turned down. Turns out he was interested in me as well and he too had an uncommon sexual orientation. We did some fast dating over less than a week (real world) and after a month and 300 miles later he turned his whole life upside down for me. We're now inseparable.
And guess what else- I'm a very important and respectable figure. I'm the CEO of a startup and growing corporation. The only thing that has ever been a real problem for me is other peoples perception of my sexual orientation. Something I've had no choice but to keep quiet about. Everybody has a screwed up view of the world. The media and others have scapegoated people like myself and put forth a negative undeserved stereotype that gives the perception of danger. In reality you can make any group out to be a threat given you pick out crazies from within that group and then use the right communication, of biased words, repeatedly, in a continuous stream of negative shocking propaganda over decades of time.
The tighter the filter, the more people will be annoyed by it and turn it off. And if it really were strictly a porn filter, people might be too embarrassed to opt-out. Now everyone has plausible deniability: "I need to run a VPN for work" or whatever.
It's more of a match to Nazi practices than to Soviet/Communist practices.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
This has nothing to do with VPNs in general. It has everything to do with the fact that iPredator was co-founded by Peter Sunde, former spokesman for The Pirate Bay and long term, all-around pain in the ass for the intellectual property complex.
It's hard to see how a UK Internet Filter that doesn't yet exist can be blamed for a block of a type that existed before Cameron's announcement.
Given that mobile service providers have a direct financial incentive to be able to identify VOIP or tethering traffic is it a surprise that they'd block VPNs? While there are legitimate concerns about ISP level filtering in the UK, this is not it.
Time to dust off the guillotines.
You are welcome on my lawn.
In the beginning it was "Think of children". In my country they drived throw illegal censorship (Our constitution denies censorship). They claimed it would be overseen, etc... It wold only effect servers not in our country.. Today its used for much more then just what it was originally intended. It censors sites critical to to this censorship system, it censors pirate sites (not even claimed to distribute child related material), etc... Censorship is such a dangerous road. Once you take the first step, its so easy to take another and then another and then another.... Until you are light year away from what was originally intended. Theres no oversight of system. List is classified, Who manages that list is classified, and theres no court oversight of it. So if you are wrongly places on censor list, theres no way to get out. It volantery system for ISP to be part of, except if you dont implement it volantery theres law we can make it... Personally i believe its problem of democracy. Too many old folks on power that dont understand modern world. They think sweeping problem under the rug is doing something, because that seemed to work in past. Child related issues will not go away if you put them under the rug, you need to take action... Unfortunately censorship is the wrong choice of action. Smoke and mirror trick that leaves problem un-handled..
You can switch off the blocking if you so wish on the giffgaff web site.
News at 11.
So that wasn't the news?
It's blocking site that sell VPN access. While it's annoying you can still use a VPN on your internet connection, for work or personal use.
If you're mature enough to pay for a vpn, your access to porn should be trivial. And if you made it that far and your goal was to access porn I'm sure you're smart enough to choose another vpn.
I'm sorry, but there are lots of mobile business users that don't know dick about this. These people will call their companies help desk to get the problem sorted.
I wouldn't let anyone in to my office network without a VPN. No that VPN got blocked. Any provider that generates extra work for me or my department, will be on the list of "too bloody expensive" and will lose my business. My current employer happens to have a few hundred people in such a contract and often customers have similar or higher numbers. This will cost the providers that have such silly blocks to lose business customers of all sorts and sizes.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Could it be possible the NSA is pushing the UK and Australia governments into forced censorship in order to reduce the amount of traffic the NSA decrypts and tracks? Opt out of being censored, added to a highly monitored list.
I can see the benefit of banning VPN access to most subscribes for the NSA when they are looking for bad guys. Just seems suspect that two countries with very open pornography laws are forcing default censorship on their ISPs. Two countries who co-operate greatly with the NSA on spying. There are far more countries with less open pornography laws that are not censoring the internet at all.
vodafone in the mobile contracts/lower tier of Internet offerings also blocks voIP here in Portugal; at the end of the day this operations are just penny pinching.
I am not a UK citizen, but travel from time to time to the UK.
How do those filters interfere with my roaming Internet access?
Bottom line is thus (and im a Giff-Gaff customer), is that it's a pay as you go network. From what I understand, these are designed to lock down on adult content (including betting sites I learnt the hard way) because anyone can buy a payg sim card. I had to put my driving licence number into the website to prove I was older then 18 (which is ironic considering in the UK you can have one at 17 but I digress...).
There was no "opt out of Tory porn lockdown" button to click, and giff-gaff will let me watch porn till my hearts content now. I'm not agreeing with the porn filter, that's evil, especially when out of a Tory policy, but this could be looking at the wrong thing.
So over the air networks are regulated by the FCC. Nudity, strong language, etc are all regulated. So they have legal limits they have to comply with. However the cable channels, they can do as they wish. Why then are only the premium ones the only ones with (more than a little) nudity? Ad money. The networks all have standards and practices divisions to work with the creators of shows to keep things such that advertisers are happy, and to work with advertisers to keep them happy. Advertisers worry about their brand being associated with certain things and so the networks have to keep them happy. I'm not saying the advertisers are being sensible, but that is how it is.
This is also why some shows can get away with more than others. If it is a big show, that lots of people watch, advertisers will be more willing to STFU and deal to have their spot played during it.
For that matter, the Internet gets similar things going on with ads. For example Fark used have "boobies" posts/threads with links to naked women. Generally pretty tame and not a large part of their content. However, advertisers kept bitching and some refused to do business, so Fark spun that content off in to a different site and now doesn't allow it on the primary domain. There was nothing legally keeping them doing this, just ad revenue.
How will this impact businesses that use VPN for traveling users or PPTP usage for multiple offices.
People use forks to become obese. Ban forks.
People use cars to rob banks. Ban cars.
People use bittorrent to steal music. Ban bittorrent.
Criminals will ALWAYS use lawful means to unlawful ends. Banning the lawful means does not prevent it.
What prevents it is actually holding criminals responsible for their crimes, and making prison HARD, as opposed to the modern "friendly" prisons that are more like club resorts.
If all crimes were punished with hard labor, people would stop committing crimes awfully fast. No TV. No free education. No magazines. No books. No gym. Just a sledgehammer and a pile of rocks. All day. Every day.
girlintraining wrote: ... Put them all on the island,
>Anyone who uses a 'best interests of the children' argument
>should be immediately shipped to an island populated entirely
>by other people just like them
> setup cameras,
The island is called Great Britain[1], do feel free to visit us. Everyone over the age of about, oh, five, has a mobile phone. 3G mobile data and fibreoptic broadband has near-complete coverage in all of the island's urban and suburban areas, with rollout plans for all rural areas except the Scottish Highlands. We also have CCTV cameras covering pretty much every urban area and all major roads on the island.
British people value "doing the right thing" above freedom. Freedom includes the freedom of the strong to persecute the weak, and we don't think that that's the right thing.
We Brits have an extremely conservative attitude to child safety. For example, any adult who visits a school during school hours more than twice a year, is required to undergo a background check. Missing child investigations instantly lock-down nearby borders- try to board a ferry to the European continent with your young family during a missing child alert, and you can guarantee you'll questioned and checked quite thoroughly (been there done that, especially when my youngest matched the missing child description).
You may not like filter-by-default, but it is, at least, consistent with our other national child safety policies. We are not the USA, and whilst we are friends, we don't always think the USA does the right thing.
We rate fairness above freedom. It's fair to filter all mobile data by default, if and only if, it is very easy for an adult to turn that filter off. That provision makes it fair, makes it British.
Seriously, I'm with GiffGaff and turning the filter off/on is one checkbox on a webpage, and that webpage isn't difficult to find (log in to GiffGaff's website; click Phone Settings, job done). There is no human interaction. It's monumentally simple. It's on the same web page as the checkbox to turn billing notification off (by default, GiffGaff text you after every call, telling you your balance). I turned it off, no problem; it covers all 18+ services such as betting too.
I found the filter made it an easier decision to me when deciding whether to give my eldest daughter a smart device. Sure, I could have set the DNS to OpenDNS Family Filter (which is what I did with her Linux laptop, and frankly I think all shop-bought PCs sold with operating systems should have that by default) but this setting on GiffGaff just made my life easier.
The problem with setting DNS on a smart device, compared with a laptop, is that there is no concept of sudo on Android, and a pretty poor implementation of admin rights. Any user (or permissioned app, for that matter) can change the DNS. So having a service-provider-level filter is quite handy for smart devices in a country where 95% of kids own one long before the age of ten.
When she's old enough to take on the account's bills, she can decide whether to turn GiffGaff's filter off on her smart device. And when she's experienced enough to be entrusted with sudo she can reset her laptop's domain name servers to whatever she likes.
Don't get me wrong, it would be better for Android et al to introduce proper superuser-based security. But until the vast majority of them do that, provider-level filtering remains consistent with child safety law in England and Wales.
[1] There's another Petit Bretagne - Little Britain - in what is now north-western France. They're descended from Cornish Celts and speak a dialect of Welsh. "Great Britain" in this context just means "the big island", not any statement of superiority.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
INGSOC!!