Something I learned just recently—the Australian government (surprisingly!) actually recommends VPN usage, they even provide a bit of a guide and how to; https://beconnected.esafety.gov.au/topic-library/advanced-on...
Something I learned just recently—the Australian government (surprisingly!) actually recommends VPN usage, they even provide a bit of a guide and how to; https://beconnected.esafety.gov.au/topic-library/advanced-on...
The very same office of the eSafety commissioner that is enforcing age verification for social media.
https://www.esafety.gov.au/newsroom/blogs/social-media-minim...
You say that like it's a bad thing. Not everyone thinks so.
Some people think it'd be reasonable to have every car reporting it's GPS position and speed to the government to stop people speeding, or to have facial recognition cameras on ever corner to catch criminals, or to make everyone carry an ID card that people can demand to see.
On the face of it living in a police state is safe, and secure, and actually increases your freedom to just live your life without pain. And if these systems were never abused that might be true. But sadly, the reality is that every time these things are implemented they end up being used against the citizens. So they're always a terrible idea.
You're right, some people are misguided and think age verification can be done in a way that isn't the death of privacy and anonymity online.
Don't we all hate social media? From that standpoint, anything that makes it hard to use or come with direct negative consequences is good.
I wholeheartedly disagree. When we consider a policy, it's not enough that the narrow outcome is good. What also matters are the broad outcomes and whether or not the policy is principled.
We presumably all hate Alex Jones. Does that mean the goverment saying "Alex Jones is banned from communicating publically" is good policy? Even if we agree the direct outcome is good (which I do), the principle of "the governement can silence people it doesn't like" is profoundly dangerous. In such a case I would argue we should all resist such a policy, even if we like the outcome (Alex Jones being silenced) because the principle (the majority can use the governement to silence a minority) is terrible. This isn't even accounting for the messy second order effects, e.g. radicalising Alex Jones supporters.
I think that applies to social media too. I don't like social media. However even more than that I'm scared of people using the government to limit what other people what they can and can't do for "their own good". This isn't a principle I think we can get behind. I think it's a principle that has motivated a lot of misguided acts in the past (e.g. criminalisation of drugs, sex work, taking the kids of first nations people in Australia, ...).
What do you mean by "social media"? We all hate Facebook, but do we all hate Hacker News? Mastodon? A Discord or IRC community for an online game?
I'm all for age restrictions for certain kinds of social media, but age verification is a system of surveillance and the death of online privacy.
Age verification for social media looks like it is different from age verification for internet. But it really is not.
The eSafety office is actually perfectly reasonable, minus the stupid woman running the joint. She is incompetent as fuck and clearly clueless.
The eSafety Commissioner should be elected, especially since the changes impact every day Australians, with no ability to have a say on the matters.
>The eSafety office is actually perfectly reasonable
If it was reasonable it would have been taken to an election, and not rushed in as a measure to scrub the internet of the chrstchurch massacre.
Eh, I'm no big fan of the eSafety Office but if it was taken to an election there'd either be vague general support or just a lack of interest - no big opposition outside maybe The Greens and civil/digital rights groups.
Yes. Isn’t effective regulation of dangerous products wonderful.
Effective in that its easily bypassed, and dangerous insofar as the government appears to be happy for the use to continue as long as kids use their dogs face to bypass it.
Of course, when you point this out they step into "Oh but we knew it wouldn't work immediately" which is so silly its staggering.
But of course, the technology has been applied immediately to moral panic stuff like porn also.
It is, provided there is a broad consensuss of experts in the field who agree on the danger and what to about it, the government regulates based on that information and that the regulation is effective.
Apart from those things, the Australian government did an excellent job.
Who are the experts in the field, and who decides they're experts?
"More doctors smoke camels than any other cigarette".
That’s funny, I wonder if they might remove it since it is a common way for people to circumvent the ID requirement laws for certain sites.
They probably should at least update it -- I don't think a government should recommend free VPN services. Too many of them are a form of botnet, malware, ddos, etc.
And most people don't even need them any more. The days of free WiFi hotspots being able to easily steal your credentials are long gone.
They never went away, just from your mind. Look at cheap xfinity wifi hotspots everywhere that still steal your credentials in the form of phone number and email address. The bar I went to last night has a free wifi hotspot like every establishment ever.
Misinformation smells like your own farts, disgusting to everyone but you.
But unfortunately, a VPN won't protect you from captive portals. So not entirely sure what your comment adds to the discussion other than being unnecessarily rude.
For other readers who may be too young to remember, improper privacy controls (unenforced HTTPS, poor encryption in the form of WEP, easy MitM attacks, etc) meant that public/untrusted WiFi was a legitimate security risk as things like passwords, bank details, etc were very easy to steal as they were sent unencrypted over the air. This is fortunately much less true these days with the advent of better protections across the entire stack (HTTPS everywhere, WPA*, etc) but unscrupulous VPN merchants still use this outdated argument to try to sell their products to less technically-savvy customers.
What these technologies (and VPNs) _do not_ prevent is the legitimate (and consensual) capture of user data by captive portal software (email, phone, etc), which is typically submitted by a user wishing to connect to a public network. This is what the parent comment is mentioning. Different risk profiles, obviously.
Yeah the being asked for an email or phone for free wifi option is completely different from the “I can MITM all your web requests” which is what needs a VPN.
I usually give a fake email or phone number to get free wifi anyway.
Fuck@off.com tends to work but I’ve sometimes had portals give refuse that as a “fake”, same with bob@bob.com. Billg@microsoft.com is my fallback.
me@here.com usually works. No need to be silly.
If the captive portal for an open network uses HTTP, then anyone nearby can see the information you submit.
The hotspots themselves may be iffy but almost everything uses https these days.
Main source of residential ip's you can "rent"?