this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
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Hey I heard that theres a Very Pretty Neat trick for Brits to "travel abroad" effortlessly
House of Lords voted for age verification on VPNs. Not for them of course.....
So rent a VPS abroad and run your own VPN from it. Comercial VPNs have a business to maintain so they've got to comply to keep operating and public advertising, but a privately run VPN just for yourself is just another TLS connection in a sea of other traffic.
I'm aware, got options set up. But the vast majority of people? It's not all about me like.
Give it a bit of time and you'll need a license to use a VPN. Without a license, your ISP can snitch in you. Unless you use starlink.
Your ISP could snitch on you for tons of 'illegal' traffic, but they don't because that would require deep packet inspection on an absurd amount of traffic and they gain nothing for it. Instead they pass on notices when they receive them from third parties, and take enforcement actions (like cutting off their service to you) only when they're directed to. They want your money after all.
Torrenting for example; only gets flagged when copyright holders join torrent trackers, then send letters to ISPs that control the IPs found in those groups. That's not the ISP hunting you down, they're just passing on a legal notice they've been given and thus are obligated to pass it to you.
From and ISPs perspective; a VPN connection doesn't look any different than any other TLS connection, ie https. There's nothing for them to snitch because a) they can't tell the difference without significant investment to capture and perform deep analysis on traffic at an absurd scale and b) they have no desire to even look and then snitch on customers, that just costs them paying customers.
The ONLY reason this can be enforced at all, is because comercial VPN companies want to advertise and sell their services to customers; so lawmakers can directly view and monitor those services.
Lawmakers have no way of even knowing about, let alone inspecting an individuals private VPN that's either running from private systems or from a foreign VPS.
All that's not even touching things like SSH tunneling - in a sense, creating a VPN from an SSH connection; one of the most ubiquitous protocols for controlling server infrastructure around the globe. Even if traffic was inspected to find SSH connections, you CAN'T block this or you disrupt IT infrastructure at such an alarming scale there'd be riots.
This is the UK. You need a licence for a TV. I almost would guarantee that this is happening
Or pay for your VPN with crypto?
Time for a VVPN.
Jokes aside, a Double VPN exists, which masks your VPN with a VPN.
Doesn't matter. Chinese people found a way around the firewall, pretty sure there are nerds in UK that will find a way.
Then we just need a hero to route all our traffic through the House of Lords.
A bunch of VPNs are owned by Israel. A bunch of them are also data brokers.
What does age verification mean for VPNs?
Because if I'm using a VPN using a UK server and I get any issues, I can switch to Spain, or Italy, or Zimbabwe or whatever. Is that not the case?
The government can decree that ISPs have to block the IP addresses of known VPN endpoints. That's perfectly possible. They did something similar with piracy sites before (e.g. if you go visit piratebay on virgin media you'll get an error page). It's a game of cat-and-mouse because if it's done with DNS then aliases pop up immediately, and if it's by IP then other proxies pop up, but the fact is they could make is so difficult for average users that people give up.
Not really. They just announced they want to age gate VPNs too.
China doesn't even really allow VPNs at all, yet some people can still go over the firewall.
If it's just "age restriction", I'm sure there will suddenly be a lot of grandpa/grandmas buying VPNs¹
¹When China tried to restrict online video games, kids just used their grandparents IDs for verification lmfao
China's VPN blocking is actually very, very effective, and the vast majority of people don't go around it.
And that's kinda the point - the controls don't have to be 100%, they just have to cover the majority. And for the few that do circumvent - well, that's just one more easy crime for the authorities to charge you with if they ever feel the need.
That's because there's also a language barrier thing.
Exhibit A: My parents (born in China) are here in US and they just be using wechat all the time even without the firewall.
So I guess no more internships at companies with more than one office.