Forcing social media and adult content sites to block virtual private network (VPN) access, in an effort to stop underage Australians sneaking in by hiding their location, is the likely next step in the eSafety commissioner’s fight to keep children safe online.
Australia’s eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant has controversially led the way globally when it comes to tackling the harms that the seedy side of the internet can cause to children.
Today’s eSafety initiatives differ from the so-called ‘clean feed’ content filtering plan, dubbed “The Great Firewall of Australia”, that was proposed almost 20 years ago but later abandoned.
Instead of forcing local internet providers to block access to unseemly websites for all Australians, now the government is forcing unseemly websites to enforce age verification to keep out young Australians.
The result is an under-16 social media ban, along with under-18 checks on porn sites. The methods used to verify people’s age vary, from facial scans to photo ID checks, while some major sites choose to block Australian users completely rather than comply.
So far, this latest effort to keep children safe online seems to have had limited impact. The eSafety Commissioner’s own research found that only a third of young children with social media accounts stopped using them when the ban came into place.
Meanwhile, the underage porn block triggered a rush to install VPN software, which can mask your true location. Rather than children looking to sneak into porn sites, this rush was more likely triggered by adults concerned about the privacy risks of handing over photo ID to these sites.
Why might Australia launch a social media VPN crackdown?
VPNs are perfectly legal services designed to provide an encrypted online connection for extra security, but they can also help you hide your true location.
It’s little surprise that a range of VPN services leapt up into the top 20 most popular iPhone apps in the days following Australia’s underage porn block. Visiting via a VPN server in a country which doesn’t demand age verification allows Australians to mask their location and sneak into these sites.
There are plenty of free VPN services, but as they say, if a service is free, then you are the product. While free VPNs might promise privacy, some free services sell your personal data, or even expose you to security vulnerabilities.
Now, just as with previous attempts to crack down on what Australians can see and do online, attention is turning to whether social media and porn restrictions need to be accompanied by a VPN crackdown.
How would a VPN crackdown work?
Rather than blocking access to legitimate VPN services, used by many Australians to stay safe online, an alternative is to force VPN providers to also introduce mandatory age verification for Australians. In theory, this would stop local youngsters using VPNs to get around the social media and porn blocks.
After following the example of Australia’s social media ban, the UK government considered mandatory age verification for VPN providers earlier this year but quickly abandoned the idea due to its wider impact on privacy and security.
Instead, the UK has put the onus on blocked websites and services to also block efforts to sneak in using tools like VPNs.
Likewise, rather than banning VPNs for everyone, Australia is considering demanding that social media and adult content sites block users trying to connect via a VPN.
The Australian eSafety Commissioner expects tech platforms and service providers to actively block workarounds that allow users to bypass age-restricted content and social media bans, according to documents obtained by The Guardian under Freedom of Information laws.
The documents state, “service providers must take reasonable steps to prevent workarounds like VPNs so eSafety will look at this when considering compliance with codes”.
How is an Australian social media VPN crackdown likely to play out?
Of course, this all sounds very familiar if you remember the geo-blocking wars last decade, back when Australians were locked out of early foreign streaming video services like Netflix and Hulu.
Many Australians took to ‘geo-dodging’, using tools like VPNs to get around geo-blocking and sneak into services like Netflix. Rather than connecting to any foreign VPN server just so they didn’t seem to be in Australia, Australians would connect to VPN servers in the US so they would appear to be Americans.
It soon became a cat-and-mouse game, as the streaming services tried to block VPN access in the same way that social media and porn sites might be expected to block it.
As geo-blocking and VPN detection gradually became more effective, geo-dodgers became more cunning. To assist them, some global VPN services quietly configured one of their more remote US servers to not look like a VPN server in the eyes of Netflix.
So while Netflix might be easily blocking people connecting via a VPN service’s major servers in New York and Los Angeles, a little trial and error would often get you into Netflix via a far-flung VPN server in the likes of Alaska.
A new VPN crackdown will likely play out the same way, with workarounds for those prepared to persist and some VPN providers happy to quietly help. Meanwhile, everyone involved can declare the crackdown a success because no Australians appeared to make it through.
Similarly, Australia declared success ten years ago after forcing local internet providers to block access to sites like The Pirate Bay. No Australians seemed to get through the block, because they used VPNs and SOCKS5 proxies to mask their location and simply go around the block. Everybody wins.
Once again, a social media VPN crackdown isn’t the answer to enforcing Australia’s eSafety age restrictions, but it will allow politicians to declare the job done.
The post Why Australia’s potential VPN crackdown is fundamentally flawed appeared first on GadgetGuy.
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