Tootfinder

Politicians have now discovered that people are using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to protect their privacy and bypass invasive laws.
Their solution?
Entirely ban the use of VPNs. 
Yes, really.
As of this writing, Wisconsin lawmakers are escalating their war on privacy
by targeting VPNs in the name of “protecting children”
in A.B. 105/S.B. 130.
It’s an age verification bill
that requires all websites distributing material that could conceivabl…

Lawmakers Want to Ban VPNs—And They Have No Idea What They're Doing
Remember when you thought age verification laws couldn't get any worse? Well, lawmakers in Wisconsin, Michigan, and beyond are about to blow you away.It's unfortunately no longer enough to force websites to check your government-issued ID before you can access certain content, because politicians...

Weekend Reads
* VPN IPv6 leaks
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.19698
* ACME protocol brief history

Smoothing Rough Edges of IPv6 in VPNs
How do commercial VPNs interact with IPv6? We show two "rough edges" in how commercial VPNs handle IPv6. First, we show that many IPv4-only VPNs leak IPv6 traffic to the ISP. Individual use VPNs in part to conceal their local IP addresses, so such leaks reduce user privacy. While prior work has studied VPNs in testbeds, we use a new dataset of 129k VPN-using daily visitors to WhatIsMyIPAddress.com that quantifies these leaks and show 12 VPNs previously considered safe still leak for at least 5%…

"Block VPN users from Wisconsin" means blocking all VPNs, becuase … VPN.
"Websites subject to this proposed law are left with this choice: either cease operation in Wisconsin, or block all #VPN users, everywhere, just to avoid legal liability in the state. One state's terrible law is attempting to break VPN access for the entire internet, and the unintended consequences of …

Half of US states now require users to upload IDs or biometric data to access pornographic content, as Missouri became the 25th state to enact such a law (Samantha Cole/404 Media)
https://www.404media.co/missouri-age-verification-law-porn-id-check-vpns/

Half of the US Now Requires You to Upload Your ID or Scan Your Face to Watch Porn
Missouri’s age verification law, enacted on November 30, is the halfway mark for the sweep of age verification laws across the country.

Half of US states now require users to upload IDs or biometric data to access pornographic content, as Missouri became the 25th state to enact such a law (Samantha Cole/404 Media)
https://www.404media.co/missouri-age-verification-law-porn-id-check-vpns/

Half of the US Now Requires You to Upload Your ID or Scan Your Face to Watch Porn
Missouri’s age verification law, enacted on November 30, is the halfway mark for the sweep of age verification laws across the country.

Half of the US Now Requires You to Upload Your ID or Scan Your Face to Watch Porn https://www.404media.co/missouri-age-verification-law-porn-id-check-vpns/

After the Online Safety Act’s onerous internet age restrictions took effect this summer,
it didn’t take long for Brits to get around them.
Some methods went viral, like using video game Death Stranding’s photo mode to bypass face scans.
But in the end, the simplest solution won out: --- VPNs.
Virtual private networks have proven remarkably effective at circumventing the UK’s age checks,
letting users spoof IP addresses from other countries so that the checks neve…

The VPN panic is only getting started
The UK government is facing calls to add age restrictions to VPNs in order to stop them being used to… get around age restrictions.

My wife loves Bookgoblin by Elisabeth Wheatley, and she had an early black friday sale starting today.
But the author has a geoblock on her store which excludes Swiss IPs (and VPNs and Proxies). I couldn't let that stop me. And it didn't.
FOR BOOKHALLA!
#bookgoblin #elisabethwheatley

Today (and yesterday) I installed and fiddled with two seperate VPN clients for two customers. I have by now a very large collection of VPNs, and most of them suck...