With a lot of talk from governments around the world trying to either ban or restrict VPNs, I’m curious to know what are our options if they follow through? I know we can use the Tor network, but is there other options? I assume we could self-host our VPN since I don’t think it would be affected by a possible ban. Is there a less tech-savvy option I’m not aware of? I’m just trying to understand all of my options just in case a ban does happen.
Then you tunnel ssh.
socks override blocks.I have never heard about socks. I’ll have to look into regardless if a VPN ban happens or not. Thank you.
Dynamic port forwarding; I happened to see a post on mastodon that depicted it immediately after posting.
Basically, you create an ssh dynamic tunnel, and proxy the necssary traffic to it.
Interesting. I’ll take a look at it, Thank you!
Socks5 proxying and an international friend group you trust and who trust you with each others internet connections perhaps.
I have not heard about Socks5. I’ll look into it. Thank you!
They are handy - you can also establish one over an SSH connection using ssh -D if I recall correctly, which can be super useful in combination with a dynamic dns service and a bastion host/jump server.
It’s all talk. VPN is a critical business security feature. Corporate security would be at risk. Ignore this crap.
I hear you but whats to stop them from banning foreign vpns?
Foreign business users need to work too?
im not sure if enterprise interconnects would be banned. So as long as the business has has a local office or endpoint for the vpn they should be able to connect to the enterprise from that without it strictly being a vpn.
Zero Trust changed the conversation.
It would be fairly trivial to allow VPNs for businesses and government institutions, but ban them for regular users.
It would not be trivial to tell between business and non-business hosts.
Hahaha, really? How, pray tell?
VPN can be run (and is run) such that it can’t be detected (more accurately, is incredibly difficult to detect).
Maybe it’s possible, but it’s a much bigger barrier to entry than it is currently, and it being illegal does have consequences when the cops search your devices.
Plus e.g. the UK is planning to mandate preinstalled government spyware on phones and AFAIK China already implemented that years ago.
Like in china, with a govt. rat in each company?
They’d love that, yeah.
Government security would be too. They would undoubtedly give themselves an exception, but it shows how little the people suggesting it understands how the modern world operates
Not really any less tech savvy than Tor, but I2P is also a thing
Also worth noting that traffic obfuscation would become much more important, as a crackdown on VPNs would likely also be accompanied by a crackdown on privacy-oriented tools
The effectively can’t ban VPNs and even if such an absolutely ludicrous law were to be passed, VPN traffic can still be hidden to appear as normal traffic. It’s all bullshit bluster from idiots who have no understanding of how technology works at all. VPNs are absolutely vital to the function of businesses and institutions, banning them would be an absolute disaster for everyone but criminals who make money from stealing data and maybe dictators (though they’d still be screwing themselves over in the long run).
On the one hand, I know it’s bullshit and they would just break the tools that a.) everyone uses, including themselves, and b.) it just brings even more chaos and will not solve the problems that they think. On the other hand, I feel they just don’t give a shit and want to go through because they know that enough people will probably just give up and accept it, which will lead lawmakers to continue with these surveillance tatics because they’ll believe people are ok with it. I don’t think it’s going to work, but I feel we are at a point where they just don’t care and will push on through with some way to damage VPNs. I apologize if I’m coming off pessismistic, but’s hard to try to be positive when it’s not one country, but many countries that want to restict or ban VPNs and this just part of the plan to dismantle privacy. We’ll see what happens in the coming months.
Businesses use VPNs to secure traffic. I doubt they will just drop them when the risks are assessed.
We’ll see what happens, but I feel that, if they don’t ban VPNs, they are going to try and put restrictions on them in some way. I just think they don’t care if they break the tools everyone uses and are totally on board messing with VPNs, which is why I wanted to see if there was anything else that could possible replace them. I’m hope I’m wrong and they leave VPNs alone, but we are in new territory of governments trying to dismantle our privacy and I feel at this point, nothing is off the table.
Rules for thee. I really do not think a ban on vpns would affect business at all, it would be focused on the general population as we do not deserve privacy where the businesses do.
The question is kinda “for what purpose”. VPNs are great for accessing content on mainstream websites that are restricted in your country, more niche solutions like self-hosting your own VPN, Tor or I2P don’t really work for that. I suspect those kinds of solutions are more useful for securing your own network, communication with other privacy enthusiasts or piracy.
Basically, to acess restricted content and protect my privacy. It seems like VPNs are the best tool and nothing else has come along to fill that gap. Ad you said, Tor, I2P, and self-hosting your VPN would be more securing your network. I don’t believe VPNs bans are going to work because everyone uses one or one reason or another, but just in case they somehow go through, I wanted to be prepared. Also, just genuinely curious as well.
VPN prevents your ISP/your nation-state from monitoring and/or tampering with your traffic.
My best guess is to yell at people while hidden behind a car so they can’t see you, then run away.
Yeah let’s write down all the available options here before they write the legislation so they have a nice easy reference for how to write the law so it squashes all the workarounds.
What is your implication here?
That no has ever or will ever discuss VPN alternatives outside of this +30 vote thread on lemmy.ca and that the governments of the world will reference this thread to go about determining what to outlaw?
I’m sorry to tell you, but every single one of these governments is already in some regard aware of everything in this thread and beyond by virtue of it already being public information - and if they weren’t aware of this stuff, don’t you think they would for example, just pay someone to tell them?
They know Tor exists, they know I2P exists, they know Socks5 Proxies exist, they know meshtastic exists, they know freenet exists, they know Yggdrasil exists, they know mail exists, they know sharing the password to an email account so that people can read each others saved drafts exists, they know carrier pigeons exist, they know SSL/TLS exists, they know telnet exists, they know ssh exists, they know IRC exists, they know matrix chat exists, they know signal exists, they know simplexx exists, they know telegram exists, they know dead drops exists, etc.
You also realize that if they wanted to cover all of their bases they don’t even have to go that far? They could just pass a law stating “Any product or technology which hides internet bound network traffic from your ISP is now illegal”? They could even say “Attempting to keep any information private from a government entity is illegal”.
Like unless you secretly wrote your own communications protocol and then never shared it (which kind of defeats the purpose), then if you have access to the knowledge of the protocol existing, so does any government (at least in the case of any widely used communications technology).
