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Utah to hold websites liable for users who mask their location with VPNs
- notepad0x90 5mo agowhy are they building data centers in states that are hostile to hosting content there? can't be latency, because california has plenty of data centers and is close by.
- OutOfHere 5mo agoPeople need to do their best to stop paying so much in taxes to their state governments, failing which the governments get increasingly authoritarian. The state governments clearly have run out of real problems to solve, and when they do, they then attack basic freedoms. Keeping them strongly tax-constrained keeps them lean. As it stands, these governments are representing special interests, not the people. It doesn't matter how many places or where this is happening; the logic is the same. What happens is that the tax money is a prerequisite for strong enforcement. Without an excess in tax money, there isn't going to be substantial enforcement. I am not asking anyone to break tax law; only to aggressively hunt for exceptions to your advantage. Outside of a W-2 salary for which taxes are pre-deducted, there are many ways, more applicable to businesses, also to independent contractors. Even for those with a salary, they ought to do their best to collect all the legally qualified benefits that they can. Lots of independent contractors get paid as W-2 when they could be getting paid as a corp, for which they could write off a portion of the taxes via deductibles and in various other ways. Lots of people could be ordering online at websites that don't deduct a sales tax. Using a Delaware corp for various transactions can also go a long way. Living in a geography where the property taxes are not absurdly high or rising also matters.
- nephihaha 5mo agoThis is happening worldwide.
- wartywhoa23 5mo agoKudos for highlighting this, because almost everyone here seems to be thinking of their own pot, not the whole kitchen.
- OutOfHere 5mo agoIt is not happening in destitute countries, is it? If you have normalized and given up already, then your fight is already lost.
- nephihaha 5mo agoI don't know what the deal in developing countries is with this, but it is popping up on multiple continents. The PRC doesn't need it since their internet is so heavily controlled (although I gather workarounds exist), and it does feel like the west is copying the PRC.
- abustamam 5mo agoYou're saying that like we have a choice. If we don't pay taxes we get jailed. Simple as that.
- kordlessagain 5mo agoStop paying so much is not the same as not paying. Why are you making it otherwise?
- abustamam 5mo agoOh OK, thanks for clarifying that I can pay less than I owe and be scot free.
- iamnothere 5mo agoMake less, pay less. If you’ve had a successful career already, you may be able to “drop out” and find a place to live cheaply. I’ve heard good things about Panama.
- abustamam 5mo agoIf you've had a successful career already you probably already paid a lot of taxes, unless you're a billionaire in which case you're not paying taxes anyway.
- iamnothere 5mo agoThe best time to start making a lifestyle change was years ago, but the second best time is today. If you can legally opt out, there’s no good reason to keep pouring tax dollars into a corrupt, possibly unfixable system.
- abustamam 5mo agoSo your solution to fighting against authoritarian regimes is to be rich enough to fuck off to another state/country?
- j0yb0y 5mo agoRepresenting special interests != too much tax money. Orthogonal. It’s a mind boggling leap.
- OutOfHere 5mo agoThe tax money is a prerequisite for strong enforcement. Without an excess in tax money, there isn't going to be substantial enforcement. Think ahead.
- ambicapter 5mo agoHere's another prerequisite, even farther back than "strong enforcement"--not voting in governments with authoritarian tendencies.
- iamnothere 5mo agoUnfortunately it’s been impossible to avoid Red or Blue flavored authoritarianism for the last few decades due to authoritarian control over both the political process and the entrenched bureaucracy.
- wat10000 5mo agoHow exactly am I supposed to do that?
- dntrkv 5mo agoYes because the countries with lower taxes are so free and democratic. Pretty sure the relationship is inverse if you take even 5 min of your time to look.
- iLoveOncall 5mo agoHere's the website of Utah's governor if you want to access it via a VPN: https://www.votecox.com/ https://www.votecox.com/
- abustamam 5mo agohttps://www.votecox.com/fighting-federal-overreach https://www.votecox.com/fighting-federal-overreach > Fighting Federal Overreach "The US govt can't overreach! That's my job!"
- Lucasoato 5mo agoNo GDPR banner, even if visiting the website from EU
- ronsor 5mo agoRealistically domestic US politicians have no reason to care about EU regulations
- M95D 5mo agoWhat GDPR banner? GDPR doesn't impose any banners. ePrivacy Directive did, and it's actually a choice: use tracking cookies with consent, or don't use tracking cookies and no consent is needed.
- eu 5mo agois this even doable/enforceble?
- kstrauser 5mo agoNot even remotely.
- functionmouse 5mo agono, they're inventing make-believe crimes they can accuse anyone they don't like of
- dgrin91 5mo agoSure, it would force sites to block traffic from vpns. The fun part is when you post videos of yourself using a vpn to go to gov website or the candidate website and watch them do nothing
- sammy2255 5mo agoThat's called complying, not enforcing
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 5mo agoWell, how is a law against murder enforced when someone doesn't comply with it?
- luma 5mo ago[dead]
- nephihaha 5mo agoWhat a coincidence that Utah is following the same pattern as Australia, the European Union, Norway and the UK, while pretending they came up with it independently.
- bryan_w 5mo agoI wonder who's in common there?
- nephihaha 5mo agoThey obviously get the ideas from the same sources. Somewhere they don't invite ordinary people to like Davos or other conferences.
- wat10000 5mo agoCould just be monkey see monkey do.
- nephihaha 5mo agoThen it is monkey see, monkey do the same/similar policies on smoking control, LEZ, digital ID, children's education, red meat and fish consumption, alcohol consumption, women's rights and a whole host of other things. Some of these are good causes, some not so much. Some of them rely on an excluded middle.
- wat10000 5mo agoAre you suggesting there's some shadowy cabal responsible for getting women the right to vote?
- nephihaha 4mo agoErm, no I'm not. I'm pointing out the homogenisation of policies across multiple countries. You should be well aware by this point in life that plenty of good causes are used to justify not so good things. Or to put it another way, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". On the most basic level, I could give the example of various children's charities being used to line the pockets of someone rather than doing what they are supposed to. That has happened a number of times. In much the same way, we can see child safety and bullying (both of which are real issues) being used to excuse clamping down on freedom of expression online. A generation ago, the excuse of terrorism was used to remove civil liberties as well. With women's rights, we see a genuine issue being abused. We see women from upper class or aristocratic backgrounds like Ursula von der Leyen getting jobs, while the bulk of women continue to work in grinding poverty, and can barely support themselves let alone a family. That is just the same old oligarchy and nepotism with a female face.
- righthand 5mo ago> It also prohibits covered websites from sharing instructions on how to use a VPN to bypass age checks. This country is led by idiots that do not enjoy or like freedom.
- abustamam 5mo agoCorrection — rules for thee, freedom for me. The people who lead our country love their own freedoms, as long as it allows them to infringe on everyone else's freedoms.
- jitler 5mo ago> This country is led idiots that do not enjoy or like freedom. This country is populated by idiots that do not enjoy or like freedom. These people didn’t just seize power in a coup.
- ndsipa_pomu 5mo agoMaybe a failed coup that ended up not being punished.
- cosmicgadget 5mo agoThat'll get stuck down federally.
- functionmouse 5mo agoonly the beginning
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- Nifty3929 5mo agoVPNs are on their way toward being banned and/or heavily regulated. I imagine what will happen is a requirement for VPN providers to "know your customer" just as banks do, and for them to be able to tie a particular traffic stream back to a specific human.
- mrbluecoat 5mo agoHow will they ban self-hosted VPNs? https://mrbluecoat.blogspot.com/2025/08/self-hosted-vpn-options.html https://mrbluecoat.blogspot.com/2025/08/self-hosted-vpn-opti...
- wilkystyle 5mo ago"Utah to hold Cloud providers liable for failing to police self-hosted VPNs on their infrastructure"
- kiba 5mo agoSeems like they will do that too.
- thfuran 5mo agoBan them, demand GitHub et al take down the illegal repos, hit up Microsoft for records of everyone who ever downloaded them, hosting providers for customer records, and ISPs for lists of customers with VPN-shaped traffic between themselves and their hosting provider. Or if they’re lazy, just demand that the hosting providers sort it out.
- bethekidyouwant 5mo agoWhat are you talking about what? What illegal repo? SSH? Socks? That doesn’t make any sense dude
- ijk 5mo agoSecure encryption has been classified as controlled munitions in the past. Making SSH illegal is well within the range of possible futures. It'd be a stupid future, but it's a stupid present so I'm not going to rule it out on those grounds.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- kstrauser 5mo agoThis is the stupidest idea I’ve heard recently. Way to go, Utah. My home router has a built in VPN server. When I’m out running around, my iPhone can route traffic through my house. Pray tell, o sage Utah legislature chucklefucks, how is anyone expected to tell that I’m accessing a website from a hotel in Berlin instead of my house in California? (Which is why we used it last time: I configured my travel router to use that same VPN so we could watch American Netflix at night before bedtime when we just wanted something familiar to relax with.) Honestly, this is the new “pi equals 3” legislation. “Let’s make laws codifying technical ideas we clearly have no freaking clue about”. Again, way to go, Utah.
- jeroenhd 5mo ago> how is anyone expected to tell that I’m accessing a website from a hotel in Berlin instead of my house in California Remote attestation in combination with location access as a start. DPI on TCP/UDP timinings/round trip time measurements for distant locations, combined DNS leak detection to catch bad VPNs. Use browser APIs to detect WiFi vs mobile data to let some 2G users through. IPv6 accessibility checks to catch many other VPNs. There are always technical means, as the more restrictive streaming services like to prove. There are many, many more ways websites can verify that users are not on a VPN that most websites don't bother with, and until they all do and people still use VPNs, legislators will find ways to punish websites. The real end goal isn't to block content these people dislike within their state, of course. The goal is to go after the existence of adult websites and, in worryingly more common cases, websites discussing basic LGBTQ topics.
- kstrauser 5mo agoNo. That’s how someone with pervasive access to Internet infrastructure could tell when I’m on a VPN. It’s impossible for a given website to tell that I’m accessing it over a VPN. Not difficult: impossible. It cannot be done.
- ijk 5mo agoSo the individual website has to subscribe to the surveillance operator's IP location verification service, or be fined.
- mvdwoord 5mo agoI am completely baffled by this wave of new laws and proposals... they feel dystopic and can seemingly only lead to brutal restrictions on the internet. What will we end up with? Only attested modems / endpoints in the home? With DPI? And a government issued smartcard to use it? It comes across as if this is what some legislators are actually after... they must have some technical advisors who can explain to them that the solutions they propose will not work and I am a bit worried they will morph the public discussion into enforcing at a lower level otherwise "the bad guys still circumvent"??
- throw848tjfj 5mo agoWe will end with correct and desired behaviour. If you misbehave, you get internet ban, and lose your livelihood. Driving licences, passports, electricity, banking... etc already work this way. Technical details are irrelevant. You should not be able to criticise current or previous government!
- peddling-brink 5mo agoWhat previous government? We have always been at war with Eurasia.
- throw848tjfj 5mo agoWho today even declares wars? We can be best allies, while you blow up our pipelines!
- shaftoe 5mo agoI'm confused where all of this censorship is originating from. What wave of efforts is culminating? I can't really explain this from any movement I can see.
- OccamsMirror 5mo agoIt's all coming from Meta: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/reddit-user-uncovers-behind-meta-154717384.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/reddit-user-uncovers-beh... Big tech wants regulatory capture.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- antibull 5mo ago[dead]
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- juliusceasar 5mo ago[flagged]
- pbasista 5mo agoWhat is the motivation for such a measure? In other words, which problem is it trying to solve? And how it is supposed to do so? I think that we should not carelessly invent laws that just "sound good" to some lawmakers but have no real fact checking done to support them and are not backed by science. Because, in my opinion, then there is a high risk that these "good intentions" will backfire spectacularly. While not getting even close to achieve the desired effect.
- tardedmeme 5mo agoI believe the perceived problem is that people in Utah are watching porn.
- pbasista 5mo agoI see. Then I would ask a follow-up question: "Why is that a problem?"
- FrustratedMonky 5mo agoDoesn't this seem impossible? So if I have jo-blow web site. And a user uses a VPN, how am I supposed to do anything about it. And why should i?
- tedd4u 5mo agoDon't host your website in Utah and avoid having a business / tax nexus there.
- cosmicgadget 5mo agoI think you are okay: > Commercial entities that host "a substantial portion of material harmful to minors" are now prohibited from facilitating or encouraging the use of a VPN to bypass age checks. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/utahs-new-law-regulating-vpns-goes-effect-next-week https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/utahs-new-law-regulati...
- kstrauser 5mo agoI have an Amazon affiliate link on my website. Now it’s technically commercial. I say things in support of my LGBTQ friends and neighbors. Now it’s technically harmful to minors. This isn’t a slippery slope. It’s already an avalanche.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- cosmicgadget 5mo agoI don't think that is accurate but you seem to have decided.
- kstrauser 5mo agoWhich part of what I said couldn’t be argued in court by an ambitious prosecutor?
- bradley13 5mo agoThis is happening simultaneously in many Western countries. It is clearly somehow coordinated. You don't need a tinfoil hat to see the conspiracy. Equally clearly, this is a first step to requiring identity, and ultimately government approval for your activities in the internet. Somehow, we really must reign in the political class, before we truly land in a dystopia.
- markus_zhang 5mo agoI guess this is just to accelerate the preparation for a total war.
- wartywhoa23 5mo agoOne can't make all cattle pens fight to total mutual extermination without isolating them first, and blocking all information about the farm owners.
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago> It is clearly somehow coordinated Well, yes—parents’ groups are coordinating. Similar to how drunk driving and cigarette rules were passed globally in about a generation. You don’t need reptiles when polling is so strongly against kids on social media.
- frm88 5mo agoI think you might want to zoom out a bit: digital authorianism has been on the rise since (at least) 2022 and is subject to scientific study: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5117399 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5117399 This chapter explores the defining characteristics of digital authoritarianism as exemplified by countries such as China and Russia, identifying three primary pillars: information control, mass surveillance, and the creation of a fragmented, isolated Internet. Furthermore, this chapter emphasizes that digital authoritarian practices are not confined to authoritarian regimes. Democratic governments and technologically advanced private corporations, especially the dominant tech companies shaping the modern Internet, are also capable of adopting authoritarian tactics.
- tekawade 5mo agoI understand the need for age verification. And better way to do this is have all device way to communicate the age set by parents to websites. This is just one of the way. “The Anxious Generation”- Jonathan Haidt put it across. Rey well. It’s import at this day and age to check age online. Banning VPN is not the way. Even ChargePoint app does not work with vpn on I am baffled.
- ijk 5mo agoI don't understand the need for age verification. I mean, I understand what it effects it has, and why many parties want to perfect their expanding panopticon, and why screaming think of the children makes politicians' brains turn off. It won't fix children or social media. That's been apparent ever since Facebook defaulted to real names and people still posted everything they would have otherwise. It makes it easier to use social disapproval to destroy nonconforming individuals, I suppose. And to sell ads. And to destroy anyone who criticizes the government. So no real downside if you don't care about that sort of thing.
- kstrauser 5mo agoWhen I was a kid, I acquired long distance calling cards[0] so that I could dial into faraway BBSes and access a different variety of pictures of nakedness than I had access to locally. This notion that you can bar kids from accessing porn is highly amusing. [0]Fictional; this is not a confession; I know my rights
- tgv 5mo agoThere is no need for age verification: ban all mobile devices and access to anything vaguely "social" (and possibly porn) for everyone under 18. Place heavy fines. But it requires more guts than governments have. They get lobbied, coerced by corruptible friends, and threatened, and we end up with the worst of all outcomes: addicted children without attention and lack of privacy.
- nunez 5mo agoSo they're asking ISPs to build the Great Mormon Firewall, basically. Cool, cool cool, cool, cool. I'm more scared that there is a push to do this federally, as that will, effectively, be tantamount to establishing explicitly state-controlled media.
- y-c-o-m-b 5mo agoI gather that's what all the sneaky bills introduced over the last decade banning encryption were attempting to do. They absolutely want this at the federal level.
- bilsbie 5mo agoI really miss the 90s. Can someone make a new internet that’s like that?
- pixxel 4mo ago[dead]
- Nifty3929 5mo agoMe too! Where is the wild-west? The independent sites and dark corners with weird stuff? Those were fun times. It felt like I was an explorer in a new place helping to also build and contribute to that place. Now it's basically like interactive TV or something. Are BBS's still a thing?
- davideg 5mo agoEFF has a similar article: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/utahs-new-law-regulating-vpns-goes-effect-next-week https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/utahs-new-law-regulati... The bottom line: > if a website cannot reliably detect a VPN user's true location and the law requires it to do so for all users in a particular state, then the legal risk could push the site to either ban all known VPN IPs, or to mandate age verification for every visitor globally. Clearly anyone slightly sophisticated can bypass restrictions like this. A quick search reveals https://github.com/shadowsocks https://github.com/shadowsocks. This only harms regular users who might benefit from privacy. The dystopia levels continue to rise...
- homtanks 5mo ago[flagged]
- EvanAnderson 5mo agoProduce a succinct, widely-agreed-upon definition of "harmful to children".
- CamperBob2 5mo agoI'd settle for a good risotto recipe. This thread appears to be under attack by bots.
- homtanks 5mo agoThe Utah statute defines it as: > (a) any material that the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find, taking the material as a whole and with respect to minors, is designed to appeal to, or is designed to pander to, the prurient interest; > (b) material that exploits, is devoted to, or principally consists of descriptions of actual, simulated, or animated display or depiction of any of the following, in a manner patently offensive with respect to minors: > (i) pubic hair, anus, vulva, genitals, or nipple of the female breast; > (ii) touching, caressing, or fondling of nipples, breasts, buttocks, anuses, or genitals; or > (iii) sexual intercourse, mastu rbation, sodomy, bestiality, oral copulation, flagellation, excretory functions, exhibitions, or any other sexual act; and > (c) the material taken as a whole lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors. Sounds reasonable enough, wouldn't you say? I hope you would agree that children shouldn't be browsing these websites.
- EvanAnderson 5mo ago> Sounds reasonable enough, wouldn't you say? You're willfully ignoring the "culture war" aspects of "a" and "c".
- homtanks 5mo agoWhy don't you explain what you mean instead of making unsubstantiated claims about what you think I'm ignoring?
- bloppe 5mo agoThere's tension between this law and the 14th, 5th and 1st amendments. Due process doctrine from the 5th and 14th establish unconstitutional vagueness. A law cannot be so vague as to be impossible to comply with. This law requires websites to enforce a ban based on information they don't have access to. Without explain how they might possibly achieve that aim, it can be considered unconstitutionally vague. The 1st amendment requires that a law restricting free speech use the least restrictive means possible to achieve it's aim. Due to the vagueness of how to comply on a technical level, the only possible way to comply would be to require global identity verification based on Utah's standards. I don't think that would pass a least restrictive means test.
- Nifty3929 5mo agoI'm not convinced. I use a VPN basically always, and frequently get blocked by VPN detectors. It's not perfect - sometimes switching VPN servers/providers gets me past it, but websites can employ VPN-detection technology. Then they just block you, which is what this is all about. Force companies to start blocking VPN traffic. It'll be at the individual site level for a while, then at the ISP level in a few years.
- docjay 5mo agoIn a single sentence you explained how trivial it is to get around the current technology, then said they can just use the same thing. It’s so simple, just make it perfect and use it?
- bloppe 5mo agoThere are VPNs like Mysterium that specifically advertise being "unblockable" because they cycle through thousands of residential IPs instead of using a stable set of easily-blacklisted addresses. These will probably get more popular. Also, self-hostable proxies running on any cloud you want are already very easy to set up and use. And they can easily run on any platform large or small. It's just always going to be so easy to get around these rules for anyone who knows how to use a coding agent, which is basically as easy as using Google.
- ChrisArchitect 5mo agoRelated EFF coverage: Utah's New Law Targeting VPNs Goes into Effect Next Week https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47969868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47969868
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- phendrenad2 5mo agoI'm tired of fighting this stuff. The forces allied against internet freedom are just too large for us regular Hacker News nerds to deal with. What we need is a mass awakening of normal people who see the effects of internet censorship and demand a reversal. And sadly, that might not be possible until the normal people get a taste of censorship to realize they don't like it. So now I think, the sooner we go full China the sooner we can get things back to normal.
- burnt-resistor 5mo agoNo, totally wrong. It's the accelerationist's fallacy because it will cause unnecessary suffering and damage that isn't undoable because polices, laws, culture, and attitudes aren't repairable like a broken machine or a zero sum game. Hence "burn it all down" brings terrorism rather than "renewal".
- nunti 5mo agoThe pornography addicts are not a large enough constituency to have any effect.
- ventana 5mo agoIt is frightening to see how the latest anti-VPN developments in Russia [1] are somewhat replicated by some US states. For those not following, VPNs are widespread in Russia after the government started blocking popular messengers such as Telegram and websites such as YouTube, and a few weeks ago Russian government instructed major Russian websites (banks, VK social network, etc.) to stop serving users if the website detects the user uses VPN. I read this Utah news as something very similar: an attempt to reduce VPN usage by forcing the websites to collaborate. Feels very wrong to me. [1]: https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/russias-major-internet-services-instructed-on-how-to-detect-vpns-but-there-may-be-some-workarounds https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/russias-m...
- Cairn_Shadow 5mo ago[dead]