Apparently this entire clusterfuck of an idea has effectively been rendered null and void by Firefox announcing that they are going to roll out encrypted DNS lookups. Up till now, even though no-one can snoop on an https connection and get anything intelligible out of it, as long as the DNS lookups that convert "umd.net" to "75.126.2.13" were in plain text the connections could be blocked. But once the DNS lookups are also encrypted, it becomes completely impossible to identify what site a user is actually connecting to - any IP can host dozens of sites so blocking by IP address isn't practical.

Tech detail (including how to activate it on Firefox for anyone who wants to):
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/mozilla-firefox-expands-dns-over-https-doh-test-to-release-channel/

News report (The Sun):
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/9118570/mozilla-firefox-uk-porn-block-dns-encryption/

Edit: The BBC are now reporting the latest delay too:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-48700906

The sooner this shambolic disaster of a government is brought down, the better.


That will depend on where the VPN comes out - if it's an IP in the EU or North America, most banks will probably be OK with it, but if it comes out say in in Russia, possibly less so.


For this the government/BBFC (not sure which came up with it) have invented their own version, which starts off talking about hardcore stuff that can only be sold in an R18 licensed sex shop - but then ends with "or anything produced for the purpose of arousal." I could literally set up "lamp-post-fetish.com" with pictures of fancy Victorian cast iron street lamps, and as long as I managed to persuade someone it was done for arousal purposes, it would get blocked. As Leon said on Page 1, it basically enables total censorship.

I will always support a tor browser. Nice and easy to install, easy to reset your IP etc. I think it is bullshit that a country feels the need to target porn sites. Child porn site I am all in favor of. But consenting adults sharing ideas being blocked is pretty much how China's government runs the internet.

Just a side note before everybody gets all hot to trot over TOR...

1) - It was created as a US Department of Defense project by the US Navy

2) - It's estimated by people who may or may not be in possession of all the facts that the US Gov has possession of or access to over 50% of existing TOR nodes. It takes 51% to break the anonymity aspect.

3) - It was created so that people under repressive governments could successfully organize and protest against said governments without going to prison or worse. Most of the non-government nodes are volunteers who have limited amounts of bandwidth. It's considered a Dick Move to use TOR for any kind of high-bandwidth purposes. That's why I have hundreds of notes blocked on our Vidown content servers. Use a VPN or a proxy for your porn, Netflix, Youtube, etc.. Save TOR for people whose very lives may depend on it working.

Thanks for taking a lead on this MM, but people should be careful - the Opera VPN isn't quite as good as they make out:
https://thebestvpn.com/reviews/opera-vpn/

(TLDR; It will work fine to get around a block like this but it shouldn't be relied on for privacy)

Basically anything free is worth what you pay for it. Have a look here to help guide you into picking a good one, and expect to pay something:
https://restoreprivacy.com/best-vpn/
NordVPN or ExpressVPN come out top on most independent reviews.

By the way, the stealth domains give me a certificate warning in Chrome - I see you tell people about that, but can't that be fixed quite easily (perhaps LetsEncrypt)? Training people to ignore SSL errors is a good way to build bad habits.

Doesnt affect me but a friend just sent me this

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-48700906

Looks like further delay, my friend says UK plans breach European Commission rules (although that is not in BBC article)

It seems this particular delay was because HM government forgot to inform the EU Comission, which makes the introduction illegal. Perhaps they thought we would be out of the EU by 29th March as most politicians had told us on many occasions, would be the case.

That said, I am an ordinary punter in his eighth decade who knows nothing much about computers and I find all this talk about VPN's (what do those intials stand for anyway) totally confusing. I think a tutorial is required which has specific reference to UMD and it's like.

The reference above to something that Firefox has done/is about to do, is of particular interest to me as that is the browser I use.
HELP!

Correct, this is why no one should have voted leave, but everyone avoided the bigger picture. They got told they'd get more money in their pocket when the answer was - the far-right have/are using it as an excuse to whip up problems. This explains why so many businesses in the UK fold - they don't look past the end of their noses!

Hence MM having to look at long term solutions for a UK issue.

regards

Andy and the team.

VPN = Virtual Private Network. They were originally used so staff of an organisation could connect to their work systems from home or when out on the road. When you have broadband, you have an internal network (wifi or cables) that connect your devices to the broadband router. That internal network uses private IP addresses but the router has a public IP, from which it connects to your suppliers network and the rest of the Internet. So as far as everyone else is concerned, your connections come "from" your router's public IP address. If you go to a site like https://www.whatismyip.com/ it will tell you what your public IP is.

When you connect to a VPN, a kind of "traffic tunnel" is created from your device, through the router, to a router somewhere within the organisation you are connecting to. Your connections are then secretly routed through this tunnel, and will appear to the rest of the Internet to be coming from the VPN provider's public IP address, instead of yours.

So if you are in the UK but you connect to a VPN that has it's public IP address in say the USA, then to everyone else on the Internet you'll appear to be in the US. This lets people watch TV from other countries, to give a WAM-relevant example, but can also be used to get past blocks and censorship. A good VPN will also totally encrypt its traffic so even if someone eavesdrops on the connections to and from it, they won't get anything useful or intelligible.

Regarding Firefox, click on the first link I provided (the "bleepingcomputer" one) and there are details of the DNS-over-HTTPS and how to turn it on for your Firefox if you want to.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jun/20/uks-porn-age-verification-system-to-be-delayed-indefinitely?CMP=share_btn_tw

It's been confirmed - roll-out due 15 October is cancelled, it doesn't work, and our politicians didn't organise the legality correctly - big surprise!

There is a rumour it's suspended indefinitely, I cannot confirm that either way at this point. 20/6/19, Myles Jackman pornstar lawyer is on the case. When I know more - you will.

Big thanks to all those who fed info into the thread.

regards

Andy and the team.

I honestly can't see this ever getting fully rolled out. As much as im sure our oxbridge Eton overlords would love to mimick J Edgar and McCarthy by holding everyones private shit to ransom, they are far too incompetent to do it. However, this fuckin kerfuffle should hopefully highlight that it'd be good for folks to get a VPN anyways since net neutrality is apparently dead in the water.

This is of interest, it's from the link Gazadude posted.

Furthermore, it will remain legal to use virtual private networks (VPNs), which can make it seem like a UK-based computer is located elsewhere, to evade the age checks. Thus defeating the Tory manifesto pledge.

regards

Andy and the team.

Thank you (I think)

T.

I didn't know about this and had to read up on it. Thanks for letting us know.


Good advice. I'll refer to that it when I update links and advice on the site.


Right, the stealth domain is something that I've had for myself for years, and recently made available for you guys. I might refine it in the future when I get a chance but for now it's just a necessity. I'll make a note to look into LetsEncrypt tho!


Good point. It stands for Virtual Private Network. It uses your existing internet connection, but sends all of your web page requests through to another computer that's not blocked by the government. That computer actually downloads the content and then sends it to your computer in realtime. It's a simple middleman that makes it look like the only site you're going to is this anonymous computer in the sky, but really it's feeding you your internet. Apparently VPN's weren't threatened to be blocked by the UK but I could be wrong.

Since this threat is put off for a few years until they get a similar bright idea again, I'll move this to just Off-topic. I'll reply again if there are any changes, etc. I really appreciate all the tips and support.

M

I heard rumours from inside government that the delay is in some way linked to the ongoing leadership election...

Sadly my friend said he couldn't discuss details but very much implied that.

Not holding out much hope with the two candidates for a U-turn. Best case is it is quietly dropped as a policy but my best guess is once we are outside EU law they might try and up the rhetoric and come down even harder. Especially when one of the candidates... well... they probably need to up their appeal to small c conservative "family values"

The whole thing was originally a David Cameron project pandering to a Daily Wail "won't someone think of the children!!!" campaign. May was Home Secretary when he was PM so presumably shared his liking for the policy, it's entirely possible whoever wins the current leadership contest may have other priorities. Plus technological advances rendering it unworkable. Once upon a time the UK government would have had more sense than to try and regulate the Internet.

Tories will try to censor anything so long as they can either gain profit or some sort of hot Daily Mail-based PR off of it. I'd stay on your toes (whilst having a wank, that feels good), but also take a note of possible VPNs etc that work for you and revel in the fact that it didn't work for Marxist literature/prohibition/video nasties/many more, and it probably won't work in TYOOL 2019 either.

I often hear "sovereignty!" as an excuse for voting Brexit. Yes, a sane person would trust the British government with their future going forward, absolutely.

Difficult to come back from a think of the children situation even when there isn't mass public support for the regulation. As it looks like the conservative party are moving rightwards, social conservativism will probably become more important. Despite Cameron's gov passing the Gay Marriage legislation, without the support of the opposition/ coalition parties it wouldn't have passed and I've seen some analysis linking the dissatisfaction at that among the tory members as being a key reason why a European referendum was called to mollify them (Spoiler warning, it didn't). Given the next PM will be chosen by the members rather than the public (as far as the public ever choose the PM) I'm tending toward pessimism. That said Johnson was originally from the same liberal modernising school of Tories that Cameron was but given how much of a dog whistle/ blank slate/ pandering sort of guy Johnson is I don't hold out much hope for principles ruling over opportunity.

A few points I'd add to what's already said. Firstly, don't trust the UK government with any more data than absolutely necessary. When Theresa May was home secretary she introduced a very intrusive piece of legislation commonly known as the "snoopers charter" which meant that ISPs could be legally forced to give browsing data to the government.
Secondly, this issue aside I would recommend some sort of VPN rather than TOR. Tor doesn't always secure entry and exit to its networks and a lot of sites don't force the use of SSL/TLS - I'd only use TOR to access ONION domain sites.
Lastly - use an up to date browser. Firefox or Chrome (I'd say Firefox is more secure but it can depend.)