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VPNs are just tools that sketchy people use for sketchy means. There's no legitimate use for someone who isn't trying to break the law. Allowing these tools let
by freedomben 3mo ago
VPNs are just tools that sketchy people use for sketchy means. There's no legitimate use for someone who isn't trying to break the law. Allowing these tools let's underage people access porn, and do all manner of undesirable behaviors like accessing region locked content.
I have actually heard otherwise intelligent people say things just like that, including site operators who run nontrivial websites.
There are of course some people on the other side who think VPNs are a guarantee of privacy and secrecy on the internet, but that's pretty rare in my anecdatal experience. I largely blame the rampant ads on podcasts for this view.
- asdfsa32 3mo agoThis is the must absurd take possible. Most business use VPNs for their day to day operations.
- MSFT_Edging 3mo agoI think you need to read the second sentence.
- 1718627440 3mo agoHis whole comment contains a view, that some people, including elected officials hold. I don't see an aspect, that actually hints, that he means that in a sarcastic way(, besides that he is on HN).
- mulr00ney 3mo ago"I have actually heard otherwise intelligent people say things just like that" I think that is the indicator.
- tiagod 3mo agoYou guys really need to finish reading the comments before you reply...
- 1718627440 3mo agoI did, and I still don't necessarily understand his comment that way.
- NotHereNotThere 3mo agoHis second sentence is "There's no legitimate use for someone who isn't trying to break the law." I'm not trying to break the law, I use it for my corporate usage, therefore it is legitimate use. What are you trying to say?
- latexr 3mo ago> What are you trying to say? Pretty sure they meant “second paragraph” instead of “second sentence”.
- gpvos 3mo agoYeah, that comment is a textbook example of failure to communicate.
- MSFT_Edging 3mo agoYeah, basically. To me it sounded like he was doing a sarcastic quote, then shutting that opinion down.
- f6v 3mo agoI think they're trying to say you need to read the whole comment before taking it apart.
- sajithdilshan 3mo agoThis is the dumbest thing I've read in a while
- croes 3mo agoHow do you think you can work from home with a VPN for access of the companies network? Edit: missed the second paragraph
- dec0dedab0de 3mo agoRegion locking content is the undesirable behavior. Accessing it is very desirable.
- yreg 3mo agoProbably should have put a `>` before the first paragraph, because it reads like an 8/8 bait and most people won't continue to the next one. Regarding the misleading podcast claims, at least all the podcast and youtube ads made the VPNs popular on the mass market so now they are more difficult to be silently outlawed.
- lightningdev1 3mo agoLol your comment made me do a double take, I had stopped reading after the first sentence
- jaapz 3mo agoA whole thread could have been prevented with " and ", haha
- Narishma 3mo agoPutting a '>' would make it look like it's a quote from the article, which it isn't.
- yreg 3mo agoWell yeah, it's a strawman, but not unattached to reality.
- freedomben 3mo agoOops yes, definitely should have done that. Looks like it's too late to edit though
- yreg 3mo agoHaha, if it wasn't even on purpose that makes it more funny. Your comment was even dead for a while, before I (and others?) vouched for it.
- wongarsu 3mo agoMaybe put some quotes around that first paragraph. Seems like some people downvote you before they get to the part where you reveal you don't think that way
- chmod775 3mo agoMany people reading this are going to stop at the first sentence without realizing you're paraphrasing a position you apparently don't agree with.
- 1718627440 3mo agoWhat is the sign, that he does not?
- yreg 3mo ago"I have actually heard otherwise intelligent people say things just like that" Meaning the poster finds it surprising that intelligent site operators would honestly think that.
- 1718627440 3mo agoOr saying that his view is also shared by people he considers intelligent, and thus can only be rejected by others, who first need to proof to him, that they are actually intelligent. Aka. an indirect ad hominem.
- bee_rider 3mo agoIf the poster agreed with the opinion, they wouldn’t have included “actually” (indicating that they think the reader will be feeling incredulous at that point) and “otherwise intelligent.”
- freedomben 3mo agoYes correct, I vehemently disagree with people who say things like the first paragraph. I definitely should have been more clear that that was not my opinion, but it's too late to edit now
- bee_rider 3mo ago
- 1718627440 3mo agoLogging into my work computer, to work in the company network: yeah very sketchy.
- inigyou 3mo agoThat isn't the one they're banning. The law isn't as autistic as nerds think it is.
- freedomben 3mo agoExactly. I disagree with the law, but it's obviously not about corporate VPNs
- 1718627440 3mo agoBut the argument that VPNs are inherently evil, to support such legislation, is.
- sharperguy 3mo agoI'm genuinely considering whether the people replying to you are bots now.
- idonotknowwhy 3mo agoBots wouldn't miss the middle paragraph.
- testfrequency 3mo agoTIL every corp in the world are sketchy people for using VPN.
- inigyou 3mo agoThat isn't what they're banning, and you know it.
- testfrequency 3mo agoOf course, but if the argument is VPN = Bad, then it feels a bit deaf to ignore use cases for VPN…which is exactly why this law didn’t pass.
- dzink 3mo agoVPN is what a smart person uses when they are at an internet cafe or somewhere else with public internet where you can’t trust that the traffic isn’t sniffed by someone for giggles and your bank credentials are going to leak.
- Hikikomori 3mo agoTLS exists.
- Group_B 3mo agothats why we have https and certs. VPN is redundant
- f6v 3mo agoRedundancy is not detrimental to security and privacy. On the contrary, having more layers would protect you in case one of them fails (zero-day, bugs, etc.)
- streetfighter64 3mo agoIf there's a zero-day in TLS there would be a huge amount of problems that a VPN wouldn't protect you against. Even if you're using a VPN (or just a trusted ISP from your home), as soon as your data leaves their hands it would be vulnerable. Like, suppose I want to send a physical letter to my bank. I can either ensure it can't be opened (using TLS), or I can get a trusted mailman to bring it to the mail central (using a VPN or trused ISP), but only one of those measures are going to protect me against a malicious mailman carrying it from the mail central to the bank.
- bee_rider 3mo agoI’d expect the mail carrier who goes from the mail center to the bank to be slightly more trustworthy than the one who visits me off in the middle of nowhere. Or at least, if that carrier is untrustworthy, it is a big problem for a lot of rich people who have the time and money to think about this sort of stuff.
- quietfox 3mo agoThis is going to get some interesting responses by people commenting immediately after only reading the first paragraph.
- PetitPrince 3mo agoMeta: your first paragraph could really use a quotation indicator / mark. I suspect it was intentional: the ragebait was very effective on me before reading the rest of your comment (I was ready for defend my usage of tailscale to access my iot stuff).
- outime 3mo ago>I have actually heard otherwise intelligent people say things just like that, including site operators who run nontrivial websites This is an illusion we really need to remove from our collective consciousness. Running a popular website while being an ops genius, being a neurosurgeon who saves lives every day or being the world's best architect doesn't mean someone has sound opinions on topics right outside their area of expertise. In fact, nowadays it seems to be all about appeals to authority which IMHO makes us more ignorant because many people seem to not think critically anymore. Instead, it's just "an expert said so" - then you look into the "expert" and in many cases they either aren't actually an expert or they're a paid shill. But that's a topic for some other day.
- Markoff 3mo agoflagged for intentional ragebait, if this wasn't ragebait you would have used quotes
- freedomben 3mo agoI considered it, but it wasn't a direct quote so quotes felt misleading. It was a paraphrase of opinions I've heard expressed by various people in the past
- f6v 3mo ago> Allowing these tools let's underage people access porn You can't imagine how much crime I committed in my teenage years. You don't wanna end up like me, punks! Stay off that crap!
- cyanydeez 3mo agoyes, assuming your laws are like "Only blue eyed males are allowed to have internet"
- bee_rider 3mo agoI want to applaud your choice to not include anything like quotes here. That would be misleading because it isn’t an actual literal quote. And, we’re too used to just skimming posts here before jumping right in to argue against them.
- xpct 3mo agoI wanted to respond with something of substance (I still don't understand if it was a paraphrase or not) but every reply here is a meta reply, so hello to all fellow meta reply guys.
- jerf 3mo agoI think an issue VPNs face is that while your first paragraph is not objectively true, it ends up being truer than I might like because the other use cases are not well covered. If you've got one of the things the HN gestalt would call a non-sketchy use case, you've also got the problem that it's rather hard to verify that any VPN you are using actually fulfills your goals. They can say they do, but you have a very hard time proving it. On my current fiber provider, I'm already behind a very large CGNAT install. To a large degree, de facto that's already a lot of the "non-sketchy" use cases for VPN covered for me. IP addresses are already one of the weaker signals for tracking people as it is. Mobile networks have been letting you shift IPs for years just by how they work. Other internet providers that don't slap thousands of people at a crack behind one IPv4 with CGNAT didn't necessarily guarantee stable IP addresses, hence the need for dynamic DNS for decades. The hole VPNs plug is necessary, but not even remotely sufficient if you are trying to actually protect yourself from some attack. Slapping a default Windows 11 install on a VPN to a first approximation protects you from nothing. And since the "non-sketchy" uses are rather dubious, that really does sort of leave just the sketchy ones. I don't think it's a coincidence that when they pay a YouTuber to advertise them, the YouTuber generally ends up talking vaguely about the protections but fairly concretely about the sketchy uses, with screen shots showing them using Netflix in a different country. The companies know what they're getting used for and what they can provide.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- trklausss 3mo agoI use a VPN to have access to my HomeAssistant instance at home, where I can control every aspect of the house. Without this, I would have to pay for a domain name, manage the certificates, and exposing myself to external attacks. So, for me, a VPN reduces massively the attack surface. There is this law, where if you don't see the purpose of something, is probably because you never needed it. Which is fine, but don't gatekeep others wanting to use them. Edit: OP forgot to format text, so my anger should be directed to however said the quote...
- freedomben 3mo agoYes agreed. I use tailscale for the same purpose, and it's so much simpler than having to properly ingress everything from the internet. I have a few older devices on the LAN that have reached EOL as well and would be a terrible idea to expose them directly to the internet (not so much because I don't want someone turning off my light, but more so I don't end up as part of a botnet)
- II2II 3mo ago> I have actually heard otherwise intelligent people say things just like that, including site operators who run nontrivial websites. First of all: thank you for using the word say, rather than think or believe or anything of that ilk. Too many of these discussions reduce to attributing or misattributing motivations to people. That said, I still have issues with that statement. Let's assume that you are talking about an intelligent person who works in tech. Chances are something was taken out of context because they probably know what VPNs are for and that they have legitimate uses. Sometimes they miss context because they are not expressing their ideas clearly. Sometimes we miss context because we hear something we violently oppose to, and ignore the rest. Another issue is that categorizing and vilifying people genuinely doesn't help the cause. At best, people will ignore the counter points. At worse, it will push people further away. We have to listen and educate based upon issues that are relevant to the audience. Simplistic responses like, "freedom of speech" won't solve anything because those words have lost meaning. Too many people scream "freedom of speech" to excuse what they are saying, while they are active in suppressing the freedom of speech of others. Too many people use the freedom of speech as a tool to intimidate others, to restrict the speech or legal actions of others, because they are more interested in imposing their values on others rather than challenging the values of others. We should be illustrating ways that freedom of speech are relevant using examples that are relevant to the people we are speaking to. In the case of framing freedom of speech for people who are concerned with abortion: pro-life people may respond better to presenting freedom of speech as a safe stage to promote the sacredness of life, while pro-choice people may respond better to framing the freedom of speech as a safe way to seek out information relating to getting an abortion. Likewise, people can see through simplistic attacks like accusing others of using children for leverage in an argument. Most of the people who say "think of the children" are trying to dismiss people who are trying, legitimately, to protect a vulnerable class. There are plenty of good reasons why the policy mechanisms to protect a vulnerable class may be objectionable, yet framing one's opposition with a reductionist interpretation of intent pushes people apart when they ought to be seeking out better solutions. For example: two people may agree that underage access to porn has to be dealt with, but disagree on the role that VPNs play in circumventing restrictions. So talk about how VPNs are not an age-based access control mechanism. Talk about the misclassification of information about gender and sexuality as pornography, assuming it is relevant to who you are talking to. Talk about the other benefits that VPNs offer in maintaining a free society. In other words, get them on your side and start seeking out better solutions.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]