this post was submitted on 03 May 2026
721 points (98.4% liked)

Technology

84342 readers
4341 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
721
Utah first state to hold websites liable for users who mask their location with VPNs — law goes into effect, designed to prevent bypassing age checks (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 1 day ago by LuminousLuddite@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
311 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] quack@lemmy.zip 38 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (3 children)

So how do they plan on figuring out if any given user behind a VPN is in Utah?

[–] thermal_shock@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

We can just add a few thousand tor nodes too. Not sure how they will ever enforce this.

[–] MojoMcJojo@lemmy.world 10 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Age and identity verification. Unfortunately selling user data is profitable, so I think this will become more common.

[–] thermal_shock@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

So let's cripple websites that have VPN users... Lmao. Dumbest fucking government ever.

[–] Johanno@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

Well while your isp can't see what you do when you use a vpn. They can see you use a vpn.

So there is that. However you could use an isp that is not in utah

[–] NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 3 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

They can see you use a vpn.

How? Deep package inspection?

[–] generic_computers@lemmy.zip 7 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

There are known IP ranges for some VPN services. Plus even if they don't have that, they can see that all your traffic is going to one IP address and can guess/assume it's a VPN.

[–] Pyrodexter@lemmy.world 3 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

they can see that all your traffic is going to one IP address and can guess/assume it’s a VPN

Umm... What?

[–] qaeta@lemmy.ca 0 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Like with phone carriers, ISPs can see the numbers (IPs) you are connecting to. If you use a VPN, you're always connecting to the same IP, which is unusual from a regular user perspective and would tend to indicate VPN usage.

[–] Pyrodexter@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

If you use a VPN, you’re always connecting to the same IP

No, you're not. A VPN provider can have hundreds of thousands of IP:s.

which is unusual

OK, but not unheard of. And even a dynamic IP might remain the same for months, if not years, depending on the operator.

would tend to indicate VPN usage

No, it wouldn't.

[–] quack@lemmy.zip 3 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

That works from the ISP end, but this legislation makes websites themselves accountable. Even if it was about ISPs, as you said they can't see what you're doing to stop it and there's too many use cases for VPNs to just block the protocols outright.