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Why are VPN's even legal?
Obviously, I'm not arguing they shouldn't be. I just don't get why they aren't a target of the regime.
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There are valid legal uses for them (logging into work networks, etc), but there are regimes that are absolutely going after them, like Russia and more recently India
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I figured the answer was something like that. For the record, I consider most of the invalid legal reasons to be valid reasons, too.
Because the law in the west has yet to deal with them. As the west progresses towards greater authoritarianism, the west will crack down on VPNs like Russia, China and other Authoritarian states.
Traffic obfuscation works. If the state cracks down on VPN providers, we adapt and develop better ways to hide traffic.
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Traffic obfuscation works. If the state cracks down on VPN providers, we adapt and develop better ways to hide traffic.
To a limit. In China, when I visited a decade ago, any significant amount of encrypted traffic to an unknown destination was blocked by local ISPs. Even transferring files over SSH didn't work.
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Probably because the regime controls all the endpoints. That's what I've heard about TOR, anyway. Admittedly, I'm speaking out of my butt, but it's at least plausible.
FWIW, when I went to China, I prepared a VPN beforehand but when I got there, I couldn't access it because they knew the VPN's IPs. (It was NordVPN). So there is some truth that gov'ts might not care because they can still track you if they need to.
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No you're right, the guys at Tor have even recognized this and hence why they push for users to run their own end points, the more the better. Protons stealth protocol works wonders for deep packet scanning protection.
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I basically just couldn't use the internet in China.
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Xi Jinping really did a number on that country. Things were steadily getting better till he took power
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there probably are vpns that work there, most of the popular ones also blocked in Russia, but a ton of new ones have popped up, specifically targeted at russian users. I'm sure something like that must exist in China
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There definitely are. My Chinese friends have told me that basically every educated person has a functioning vpn,
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VPN's are means between life and death for many, even in the government but yes regimes are most assuredly actively trying to implement ways to block access to them. Being that proton is based in Switzerland a neutral country with extensive respect for privacy, there's not a lot they can do to them.
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Perhaps because even if they made them illegal , they couldn’t enforce the law. They are often used to login to remote work computers for remote workers.
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