Re: Online Safety Bill Etc
 

Out of (scant) interest, and maybe to clear something up . . . did you try to buy the knife Hugh, or just put it in the basket and not follow on to checkout?

Re: Online Safety Bill Etc
 

Just put it in the basket…

Re: Online Safety Bill Etc
 

Just asked him and he said that the issue about age verification arose when he tried to check out.

Re: Online Safety Bill Etc
 

Well this was always going to happen eventually wasn’t it?


But basically the site 4Chan (OK, fine, not the most salubrious site on the internet), have been fined some £20k by OFCOM plus £100 per day until they comply for not having any sort of age verification, and/or coughing up their (non existent) ‘illegal harms risk assessment'.

Except 4Chan’s lawyers have stated they have no intention of paying, will refuse to pay, OFCOM and the UK Government can basically ‘do one’.

So what happens now? Does OFCOM apply to the Courts to block them? Well that won’t go down well and I suspect that 'the Donald' will have something to say.

I suspect nothing will happen and the OSA will be exposed as the complete toothless paper-tiger that it is. Yes it might well shut down a few minor sites, steam train enthusiast, knitting sites which have a forum and so technically fall under the OSA umbrella, but are far too small to have a formal risk assessment or be able to age verify people.

But there we go, eventually OFCOM will publish figures showing that they ‘successfully shut down x hundred of offending sites - they’ll be the aforementioned steam train enthusiast sites - while the real problems are left running.

Re: Online Safety Bill Etc
 

I use an Xbox one as a media player for plex, Netflix and prime and i am being pestered to prove my age by microsoft via system messages.

It just proves that the implementation of the online safety bill is not understood at all and that the designers of the system need to go back to the drawing board. That is of course after they leave infants and progress to high school.

Re: Online Safety Bill Etc
 

Personally I wish all of them would, and show what a joke this act is.

Atm, I suspect some other sites will, as they begin to realise the UK simply has no jurisdiction over them.

Re: Online Safety Bill Etc
 

A representative of the company that owns Pornhub was on the news earlier and she said that visits to porn sites had plummeted.

She went on to say that they, as a company, always comply with the local jurisdiction of each country that they operate in and that, as a result of the OSA, people are:either no longer using porn sites, were using a VPN or are accessing porn sites abroard that don't comply with UK law. Though Ofcom are currently investigating such sites, she is concerned that, in the meantime, these sites may have inappropriate or illegal pornography available to view.

Finally, she said that they didn't have a problem with measures to protect children, but that the age verification system wasn't working because people were reluctant to provide personal details to a porn site that they didn't necessarily trust to keep their details secure or who could be hacked.

To deal with this she suggested that all phones should be sold without the ability to access adult sites, until the owner had proved that they were 18 or over.

Re: Online Safety Bill Etc
 

No, visits directly identifiable as being from the UK had plummeted.
Everyone is now using VPNs, which get logged as being from somewhere other than the UK.

Re: Online Safety Bill Etc
 

Exactly, although the clowns in Government keep saying that "Banning VPN's is not off the table" and whilst they could do it, it would be political suicide and would guarantee that Labour never get elected again.

As it is I have just wiped my Unraid Server after backing up some stuff on it, and once that server is backup, the Dell R430 server I have is going to have Proxmox installed on it, with multiple self hosted things such as VPN, Router, Password Manager, "Cloud" storage for phone, Family Image hosting etc etc.

I am also getting closer to ripping windows off my pc, it's getting more and more annoying.

Re: Online Safety Bill Etc
 

Not true. Directives had to be passed in each of the member countries, but Regulations automatically applied. That is why there had to be a "cut and paste" of EU regulations into UK law, because they weren't part of UK law beforehand. The only part of UK law was that EU regulations automatically applied.

Re: Online Safety Bill Etc
 

Yes, and how exactly was the EU regulations applied into UK law?


Parliament took the regulation and made an Act of Parliament...


So they were still making the legislation, or someone else had been given the powers to use secondary legislation.

Re: Online Safety Bill Etc
 

Where have you come across this? The only comment that i've seen from the Government said exactly the opposite :confused:

Re: Online Safety Bill Etc
 

Multiple places have reported on it, also reporting that the useless government want to expand it to cover more things.

As I have said before, welcome to North Korea.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/21...n-table-online

https://www.thenational.scot/news/na...online-safety/

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/poli...-b1255731.html

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/no...152722538.html

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/new...e-vpn-32152789

https://thepeoplesvoice.tv/uk-govt-a...owsing-habits/

Just as I have said another reason to make sure you get a self hosted VPN etc, not only will you avoid a lot of the stupid age checks, but you will be able to actually access the internet without giving this useless government more and more information.

Re: Online Safety Bill Etc
 

It does make you wonder why, over the past couple of years, many browsers have, or are starting to, included a 'built in' VPN.

What did they know (or guess) was happening long before, and what were they hoping you'd 'circumvent' by using the VPN?

:shrug: :naughty: :D

Re: Online Safety Bill Etc
 

There's many reasons why people would use a VPN, but if it's for privacy reasons, people should satisfy themselves that the VPN provider is trustworthy as they will gain access to everything they do on the internet.

---------- Post added at 14:23 ---------- Previous post was at 14:22 ----------

Thanks. I personally doubt that the Government would ban VPN's for both technical & political reasons.