Dude, the heading is still a completely false statement.
Nobody is considering banning VPNs.
It's about possible age verification for VPNs (which is already more than bad enough out of obvious privacy reasons).
Please stop spreading fake news.
this post was submitted on 08 May 2026
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Real News doesn't have any impact so why not just make shit up?
Which defeats the purpose of the VPN, stop trying to rationalize the trojan horse of age verification being brought inside the walls of liberal democracy. I don't care how many half wits and half cocked votes you have on this, fuck all the way off..
stop trying to rationalize the trojan horse of age verification
Nobody is doing that.
The comment has been about OP spreading fake information by claiming the EU is considering banning VPNs.
Fake news is bad in itself and in this case might even hurt the cause of stopping privacy restrictions in the mid to long run.
Which defeats the purpose of the VPN
You should look up the purpose of a VPN.
how many half wits and half cocked votes you have on this, fuck all the way off
This language is completely out of place here.
Stay respectful and don't insult (that's not only me, but also rule 3 of this community).
Well what's the point of a "virtual private network" if it's not private? Chances are the way you'll need to eventually varify your age will be with an ID which is the exact opposite of privacy.
Using vpn for anonymity is a relatively new usage of the technology. Typically vpn is/was used for remote access to corporate networks. Its popularity as a privacy tool may mislead many to think that's the only reason to use one.
To answer your question, the point of a VPN is to provide a secure end-to-end tunnel between two endpoints, that's it.
I'm quite curious to see how this plays out in regards to employees remotely accessing their corporate network because that's that's going to cause logistical, technical, and likely financial issues for most businesses.
I have read about vpn's being used to anonymously access the internet for like, well over a decade, in regards to china originally.
Vpns have been around far longer than people have been widely using them for privacy reasons
All I gotta say is if this type of thing actually goes through, working in IT and cyber security is going to be a nightmare.
That's not the kind of privacy that the phrase is referring to. One of the main uses of VPNs is to make it so people not on a local network can see devices as if they were on the same local network (e.g. to access an office intranet while working form home) without having to open those devices up to the public internet. For that kind of VPN, everyone involved typically knows who everyone else is and exactly what they're using it for, but the office printer is still kept private within the group.
Well in that case, this only reinforces the idea that trying to ban them is an awful idea. If anything my initial definition is what most people in government assume is the only use when in reality they'd be causing a cyber security nightmare.
Well in that case, this only reinforces the idea that trying to ban them is an awful idea.
Yes, it would be - if someone was actually considered banning them.
Which (out of the reasons you mentioned) nobody does.
OP has been posting fake information about "banning" in their headline, which this comment thread actually is about...
VPN is another case of an appropriated and bastardized term, much like hacker, crypto, AI, etc.
The term has been used wrong for so long by so many that most people now know VPN as nothing but a glorified proxy with some security, which is a rather niche use for the technology as a whole.
Might be time to find a new term for Virtual Private Networks too, so it doesn't get mixed up or get bad rep because of its other meaning.
It's not really appropriated, as it's still the same thing, just being used for a purpose other than the one it was originally invented for. Plenty of things end up useful for things other than why they were invented but retain a name based on the original very specific use case that doesn't make sense for their common use case. USB's name isn't appropriated when a device charges over USB-PD and uses resistors on the channel configuration pins to set the current limits without a serial connection, despite serial bus being part of the name.
It is the same technology, but from 'virtual', 'private' and 'network' only 'virtual' and 'network' kept their meaning. The network is no longer 'private', when all traffic goes through a third party (unencrypted on their side!).
Of course politicians are exempt. Just like with the chat control law. Brussels has been reading 1984 and what's good for me is not good for you.
"Won't somebody, please, think of the children? No, not you, Brian. Or you, REDACTED."
Every time I read a headline, it's even dumber than the last one I read. What the fuck?
Some argue that access to VPN services should be restricted to users above a digital age of majority.
The Epstein class argues that....
Says the guys who literally fuck the children. All of our leaders are chosen because they are compromised, and therefore will not cross the oligarchy. So obviously.
Which is not a new thing historically, call the borgia pope and ask him, that whoremaster of rome.