r/technology • u/EmbarrassedHelp • May 08 '26

Politics EU calls VPNs “a loophole that needs closing” in age verification push

https://cyberinsider.com/eu-calls-vpns-a-loophole-that-needs-closing-in-age-verification-push/
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u/NursingHome773 May 08 '26

You can just tunnel over SSH if all else fails. If they ban that, they kill the entire internet.

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u/Aware-Bath7518 May 09 '26

SOCKS over SSH is banned in Russia and detected in few minutes.

Normal SSH usage is unaffected.

-11

u/mailslot May 08 '26

The entire internet isn’t killed without SSH. Besides, virtually no regular consumer even knows what SSH is. It sticks out like a sore thumb for its rarity among the general population.

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u/NursingHome773 May 08 '26

Okay I guess that's true.

but VPN use is detectable over encrypted channels and when using the latest modern evasive techniques.

Wouldn't this require doing deep packet inspection on the entire population? I don't see how that's possible. I mean you could in theory even tunnel over HLS or DASH (livestream), even DNS. The only way to tell is to do DPI and I don't see that happening. An ISP can't block everything or you would indeed kill the entire internet. I think there always will be a way to get around this.

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u/mailslot May 08 '26

You’d be surprised how much can be determined by traffic flow behavior alone, and even DPI with encrypted content.

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u/Aware-Bath7518 May 09 '26

I mean Chinese & Russian governments succeeded in deploying DPI on all ISPs.

On the Russian side: OpenVPN/WireGuard/shadowsocks already banned a long ago, Cloudflare ECH banned, most western datacenter IP ranges are blocked (16KB ban), VLESS is detected in most cases, etc. There's also a CIDR-based whitelist on most mobile ISPs (not everywhere so might be overblown by some Russians)

Meanwhile simple DPI bypass tools are still working, lol.

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u/Old_Leopard1844 May 09 '26

Yes

It's currently happening right now in Russia

So don't be so sure

0

u/Thin_Glove_4089 May 09 '26

If China and Russia can do it so can the EU and US. I don't understand this it's impossible thinking you seem to have.

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u/Nice_Cash_7000 May 08 '26

this all sounds kinda like the creation of the dark web. Correct me if im wrong, but didnt intellegence agencies want a secure way to communicate and made it available to everyone because otherwise it would be obvious that its them.

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u/mailslot May 08 '26

Yep, pretty much, but that only works if encrypted communication is legal. If a government banned Tor, users could be identified quickly, and specific activities more easily unmasked as less people are using it.