You can't be that naive surely? Even the courts concluded that the IPA's oversight and use of information was illegal, yet even after that ruling nothing changed for months. So, based on the last 40 years of near zero police appetite to investigate online scammers and pedo's unless the information was wrapped up with a bow and handed to them, we need to ban all forms of encryption, passwords and VPN's?
I don't have a VPN. Do I need one?
- Thread starter Simon Belmont
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You can't be that naive surely? Even the courts concluded that the IPA's oversight and use of information was illegal, yet even after that ruling nothing changed for months. So, based on the last 40 years of near zero police appetite to investigate online scammers and pedo's unless the information was wrapped up with a bow and handed to them, we need to ban all forms of encryption, passwords and VPN's?
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Soldato
The only reason you’ve been able to do ‘naughty stuff’ and not get prosecuted is they’re short in staff. Once they get it all automated they’ll be calling. Or if you become a person of interest for another reason. They’ll check. Don’t you worry. It’s EXACTLY trusting people like yourself who don’t think they’ve done anything that bad wrong that do get prosecuted because, well, one day you clicked in a link that was a bit more than you thought it was and now they‘ve caught you. And because you never properly flushed the buffers on your PC that image you made is still partially there. And it’s the making of the image that’s the crime anyway, so even if it’s not still there it’s still there somewhere. And, as they said on the Speed Awareness training. Most people don’t do well in prison.
Fortunately it's not actually possible to ban them.
And a lot of people break the law without realising it. Don't forget that HMRC have full access to your history too!
Yeh and watch what happens then.
Perhaps read the full post that you selectively quoted out of context, my point was that’s not going to help and thinking it will is at best (and I was being polite) naive.
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Soldato
Even if they did ban them, only law-abiding people are going to stop using them. All the bad people will just keep using them. Like illegal drugs, handguns etc. etc.
Caporegime
Useful for buying software or subscriptions from other countries where they're cheaper.
Man of Honour
I bet the OP is right confused now 
There are several reasons for a VPN
1) Privacy, even though you don't do anything dodgy you don't want your ISP knowing everything you get up to
2) Being able to unblock Netflix etc to other countries
3) Being able to buy software or subscriptions from other countries where they're cheaper
4) Using Torrents, downloading from dodgy sites, using illegal IPTV services etc
5) Paedo activity
and so on ................................
if you don't fit any of these categories you don't need one.
There are several reasons for a VPN
1) Privacy, even though you don't do anything dodgy you don't want your ISP knowing everything you get up to
2) Being able to unblock Netflix etc to other countries
3) Being able to buy software or subscriptions from other countries where they're cheaper
4) Using Torrents, downloading from dodgy sites, using illegal IPTV services etc
5) Paedo activity
and so on ................................
if you don't fit any of these categories you don't need one.
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@SexyGreyFox You missed the requirement for work purposes. The real VPN requirement.
Man of Honour
I missed that because the OP obviously doesn't need it and if it's anything like my NHS one you just install an exe file they send you with your name on.
There's no mention that mine is called a VPN but it obviously is.
The other thing is that when my NHS VPN is on I can't connect to my normal internet etc, I have to remote to my works PC and go on the internet from there.
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That’s down to their VPN settings and how they do it. They don’t want you going on the Internet because the flip side is you could pretend you are coming from that location and anything you do would be as if you where sitting inside their network.
VPNs can be used for bad use. A lot of people who think it’s protecting them it’s not. There’s logs everywhere.
Please provide examples of this, if it happened and logs were made available to third parties as a result of legal action, you can bet your ass it would be massive news. The HMA disaster was a decade ago, they never recovered from that and the technical issues weren't as clear cut as people assumed... also multiple reports exist of providers being unable to provide information they don't have to courts and rights holders, again look at the PB fiasco this month/last month, even the specialist who was drafted in to give his opinion (similar to the one you hold) that logs must exist had to do an embarrassing U turn afterwards. I'm not saying that every provider doesn't keep any logs at all, or that we should believe every provider who claims this, but the ones that are worth using have a proven track record of doing exactly that. Strangely enough they often aren't the ones charging $1/m or on groupon.
Soldato
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Of which i imagine their user base will be vanishing very quickly and no further sign-ups. Damaged reputation in these cases is not recoverable. Especially with the number of VPN providers out there.
There are plenty of security researchers out there who fully scrutinise the major VPN providers. Pick one of those who pass all checks. FWIW they're not normally the "free" types, or those that are the cheapest, even though you can normally pick up good deals on Black Friday.
I think you have to be insane to use the internet for such things. Sure, a VPN is safer, but it's not bulletproof. Nothing is out of reach of a government. To my mind a VPN stops things like Amazon, Google and so on, and it greatly increases your security, but if you are a criminal it only delays the law, and if you are a terrorist it doesn't make much difference.
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Alright - https://tinyurl.com/y5vlplwy
I also need you to know that the police busted a big operation in the world where criminals assumed they would never get caught known as encrochat a bit like a vpn but called differently.
Here you go; https://www.itv.com/news/anglia/202...ter-breach-of-encrypted-communication-network
You ARE been logged everywhere.
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Thanks for that, sadly all it shows is that you don’t understand what a VPN provider is and does, hint: they aren’t an encrypted messaging platform, though you could use them to access one.
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I didn't say they where an encrypted messaging platform. I know what a VPN provider is thanks.