Posted on 07/25/2025 7:39:46 PM PDT by Salman
New age checks for websites with explicit content continue to send users flocking to Proton VPN.
The popular virtual private network (VPN) is reporting a 1,400 percent hourly increase in signups over its baseline so far on Friday, July 25, the day the UK's age verification law goes into effect. This is according to an Observatory page on the Proton VPN website that tracks such usage jumps.
Under the UK's Online Safety Act, sites and apps with explicit content must now verify visitors' ages via methods such as facial recognition and banking info, per Mashable associate editor Anna Iovine, with the goal of preventing minors from accessing the content. The law applies to adult sites like Pornhub as well as dating apps like Tinder and Hinge. The UK communications regulator Ofcom began enforcing it at midnight BST Friday.
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. Later that month, Pornhub's parent company, Aylo, told Mashable in a statement that it agreed to comply with the UK's counterpart.
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(Excerpt) Read more at mashable.com ...
It never was in the Reichskomissariat of the United Kingdom.
A promise of more “security” with the loss of more Liberty, and once this “security” cause takes hold, the reasons for using it - requiring “facial recognition” and “banking info” to transact information exchange activities - will be expanded beyond any need of “age verification”.
Absolutely. And as for VPNs they will outlaw them in the EU and then they will outlaw them here.
You can’t stop the signal, man.
I'm not so sure about that. For the past several years all personal computer boards have been mandated to have a "security chip" installed. I'm willing to bet that defeats every security measure you can imagine.
(Well, except for "one-time pads", of course.)
I don’t think hardware applies here. This is about data scraping as it goes through the internet system servers. VPNs hide content from them, they want access to this content to track your use. So a VPN is an enemy to their eavesdropping. They will outlaw these at some point so that we have no privacy at all. The UK is leading the way and we will follow at some point. In fact... Palantir is working on that data collection right now with the approval of Trump.
And government and NGOs will ‘encourage’ (or force) websites to bar VPNs from accessing their content. Just about every day I run into a, (or several) new sites that refuse connections to VPN IP banks. I have to turn off my VPN if I really want to see their content....
And this includes some commercial sites with products or services to sell, which seems to be the peak of stupidity to me.
If these measures didn't apply then VPNs would never have been allowed in the first place. If they can record your every keystroke then that means they can record your passwords. The chip also is probably used to "accelerate" decryption, so it can probably record every decrypted bit of information flowing through the system in both directions. It can also be accessed over the Internet. Heck, they probably LOVE VPNs because it protects the flow of your information to their servers.
But, heck, what do I know? It's not like I authored a book on the subject of IT security in 1993 and have been doing enterprise and government security ever since.
It’s the very same reason FEDGOV fought Apple tooth and nail to get a backdoor into cloud servers. You know, I know and most anyone with a thinking intellect knows why.
First let me say that I was not doubting your knowledge or trying to be contrary. I was just not sure how a hardware security chip could “affect” a VPN. I see now I was tired and misunderstood your perspective. What you are saying is they have given themselves a backdoor and direct connection anyhow and the security chip is basically a modem to their separate simultaneous mirrored logging system. I absolutely agree with this possibility.
I have been into these critters myself since the late 80s and have always understood the issue with Windows “phoning home”. So it is not beyond the powers that be to mandate a physical on board mirrored data collection system. In fact I talked with an old timer here who worked on systems years ago that used the AC electric power grid system as a hardwired connection to collection servers. The internet is not even needed. The AC system is the carrier.
So all we can do is try to soften the blow and try to prevent some of it. A VPN does help with those “out in the wild” from getting data. And it does hide stuff from the target channels and sites by going through a proxy node and using a tunnel. There is still some reason why China doesn’t like VPNs. They obviously work and hamper their spying somewhat then. They are not completely useless and that is why they will eventually be outlawed in all countries including ours.
The only reason why encrypted protocols have not been outlawed yet is because of the commercial sector and their proprietary internal communications. The government is afraid to clamp down on commercial entities yet. But it is coming, they will soon force even commercial entities to open up their communication systems so they are not private and encrypted anymore. Just like China...
The first arrest isn’t for porn.
It’s for hurty words.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk has weighed in on the OSA...
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1949057268739366922
The tweet is now up to 2.4 million views.
And there’s a petition in the UK...
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903
That’s up a bit this morning.
European Union secretly pressures U.S. firms to censor immigration criticism, memes: House GOP
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