Techies building UK web smut age check tools: You'll get a spec next week A spec for online age verification is due to be published on Monday, a decision backers hope will pacify opponents of the smut checks. The move comes as the pornography industry gets ready for a major overhaul of the way viewers can access web-based content, with everyone who wants to have a quick fiddle asked to verify they …
Apparently if you want to marry at 16 or 17 you need your parents' consent.
Similarly if you want one off the wrist while watching internet porn under the age of 18, that's ok, but you can only do it while your mum's in the room, tutting.
Sadly, I think that with government controlled age verification schemes in place, when having an on-line hand shandy it will feel like Theresa May's in the room tutting, whatever age you are.
"Apparently if you want to marry at 16 or 17 you need your parents' consent."
Not in Scotland. That's why Gretna Green was the destination for elopement marriages in the 1950s.
Scotland has its own laws - but often come into line with the ones for England where they are intended to cover the whole UK.
I have a BT router and there's no way to change the DNS.
You can manually set your DNS provider on your preferred device, instead of using the one provided by the router via DHCP.
It'll be buried in your network settings somewhere - instead of accepting from DHCP simply set it to 8.8.8.8.
Only thing you then need to be careful of is if you go to a hotel or are trying to get onto some other public wifi - they'll use their DNS server to direct you to their captive portal to sign in, which won't work if your device is insistent on connecting to 8.8.8.8 instead of the internal DNS they're offering.
It took me longer than I care to admit to figure that one out...
You are forgetting that the router could redirect DNS to wherever 'it' wants IF the correct ACL/Firewall Rules are setup.
(Assuming a router that has at least some facilities to setup Firewall rules etc)
This can also be performed by your ISP, if they desire, so ALL DNS goes through the ISP's DNS Servers.
(Was not uncommon in the past !!!)
I have configured my Home Router to redirect all port 53 calls to 'My Filtering DNS Server', allows lots of crud to be filtered out before you transfer it across the internet to be filtered by browser addons etc.
(I know it does not protect me from other ports being used but I am interested in the port 53 traffic that is trying to be 'hidden' in all the other DNS traffic but goes to its 'own' DNS Servers.)
Any software that plays these games tends to be 'no longer used' !!!
There are plenty of other ways to direct your traffic to the captive portal, no matter what you set as your DNS server. (I work for a company that makes gear that can do this. I can think off the top of my head of at least four or five different ways to configure our boxes to do it...)
Well, one basic way is to just hijack port 53 wholesale. That blocks custom DNS connections because they'll just redirect them all to their own server (it's a chokepoint, so unless you support nonstandard DNS standards or ports, you're stuck). Another basic way is to block all traffic wholesale until it spots the signature of an HTTP connection, which it then redirects to the portal.
How will UK law affect websites hosted outside the UK?
A small number will respect it (presuming that their UK revenues are worth the downsides). Most will ignore it as the stupid mumblings of some sill old dear in a foreign place.
Will this law enable the UK government to block websites without going via the UK Courts?
Of course. They like that sort of thing, but there are precedents, eg IWF.
How will this law work with VPN or IP spoofing?
Politicians are so stupid and so technically pig-ignorant they haven't thought that through.
"Politicians are so stupid and so technically pig-ignorant they haven't thought that through."
Additionally the few that may understand the 'Shortfalls' are assuming that the majority of the PuntersVoters will vote for them because it all sounds very good and 'protects the Children' etc etc. :) :)
Just as we think the Politicians are 'Stoopid' so they think the PuntersVoters are !!!
[A relationship of 'mutual contempt'. !!! :) ]
The 'relationship' is actually NOTHING to do with voters and politicians. That is just a story put up to pretend there is some degree of democracy.
The main driving force for policy is, and always has been, the Civil Service. In this case the Home Office want another central bureaucratic control they can administer. So they tell the journalists and activists that this is required.
The journalists then tell the politicians that this is needed, and the Civil Service steps in with a pre-arranged policy.
No need to involve the voters at all...
"We can't put rules about data protection into the PAS… That is in the Data Protection Bill," he said. "So we refer to them, but we can't mandate them inside this PAS – but it's in there as 'you must obey the law'... [perhaps] that's been too subtle for the organisations that have been trying to take a swing at it."
So that's all right. Privacy will be protected because the law says it will be. Never mind if it turns out to be technically impossible to combine robust age verification with anonymity - the law obviously trumps technical impossibility.
"Personally, I'd rather see government inaction as opposed to government in action."
Which was once the government policy on many things - it was called "laissez faire". Which means "leave alone or "let it go".
As always it usually meant libertarian attitudes to financial matters for the ruling classes - but tight control over ordinary people's private lives. A Jacob Rees-Mogg type of government.
...it usually meant libertarian attitudes to financial matters for the ruling classes - but tight control over ordinary people's private lives. A Jacob Rees-Mogg type of government....
I wonder where you got that smear from?
In reality, of course, you are describing a 'Green' government. For the Greens, their financiers, like Soros, or Elon Musk, can do no wrong, and will be given large amounts of taxpayer money to spend as they wish. While the little people are forced to eat and dring the 'right' things, then put the right kind of plastics into the right boxes, and be fined for leaving the top of your recycling bin open...
I still don't get how this is going to work. So all the safe, legit pr0n sites sign up to this blocking system leaving the porn hunting teens to access the dodgy scam filled temporary sites that are filled with malware.
How is that safer?
Can we please put a block on all MPs from ever making IT based decisions?
"Never mind if it turns out to be technically impossible to combine robust age verification with anonymity"
... presumably not technically impossible; surely it could be done with federated identity. You apply to the new UK government scheme for user ID / password combo, they verify your age and they "give you one"
Then all you have to do is use OAuth etc: to prove to the porn provider that you can log into an account you couldn't possibly have if you are under 18, and "Bob's your uncle," or whatever your preferred genre.
Of course, people will just steal or borrow IDs belonging to people over 18. But then they'd do that if the proofs were credit card details. And the government scheme would be prone to being tricked in the same manner. And it would have more holes than a colander. It's a stupid idea but, unlike good-guy-only-encryption-without-key-escrow it doesn't seem to me that the problem itself is technically impossible: it's just practically so.
The way to do it robustly and anonymously would be to have a "trusted" third party do the verification - like how you use PayPal because you don't trust a semi-random website with your credit card details.
I could see PayPal being the ideal company to provide this, however I can see them not offering it for puritanical reasons.
"I could see PayPal being the ideal company to provide this"
A good choice, but it will probably end up with Facebook doing it because thanks to all the personal data they have accumulated they will know who you are even when you don't use Facebook.
It is PHYSICALLY impossible to have BOTH anonymity AND attribution without resorting to some third party who can itself be subverted. It's just like with voting. You can either have a FREE (anonymous) vote or a TRUE (attribution) vote because security demands no third-party involvement.
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