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Supreme Court of Canada says a computer user's IP address deserves privacy protection (www.winnipegfreepress.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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Non-Paywall Article

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[–] 28 points 2 years ago* (3 children)

Sweet now make it illegal for websites to force you to disable your VPN and adblockers

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago

    Websites that are funded through ad's are not going to want you using an ad-blocker. And frankly, if you are not a paying customer, but taking up space - the business typically has right to have you removed. In physical stores it's obvious but, the online space is not much different.

    What I would love to see is some sort of initiative where users can pay like 10-20$ a month, and say 90% of that divided between the websites they view based on engagement metrics on those websites. You could have some modifiers based on the type of website as well - obviously reading news has limited ways of verifying engagement, but we know that there is a high amount of time used per article. Overall this would result in less trackers being needed, websites could feasibly decouple from the ad-driven model entirely, and that might be the best outcome.

    With the proposed model - yes, some companies are still going to hard paywall, some might have limited content available to this model and have a 1-5$ a month subscription on top for premium access, and other companies might stay exactly as they are - say like Wikipedia - but be less strained for donations.

    This type of arrangement could feasibly end the need for ad's entirely. Though you could conceivably have an Ad-supported tier as well, whereby if the user is not subscribed to the service they get ads, and if they are they don't.

    The real key to making the proposition as mentioned above work, is to require the payout method to be agreed to be a replacement to seeking ad-revenue for it's subscribed members. Overall it's likely (using quick napkin math) that this would provide more revenue per user anyways. It may also devalue web based advertising so hard that it absolutely kills it - and that would mean Content is king. We could end up in a realm where the likes of Youtube don't block content because some advertiser doesn't like certain topics. And as more news is consumed online, it may be able to kill the stranglehold the pharma industry has over the news media industry.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Websites can make you disable your vpn? Yikes.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago

    A proper vpn does not show you are using a vpn. Those users seeing a message to remove vpn are probably using proxy, or a sketchy vpn where the single IP is known to websites

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    Sorry: This is going to be a wall of text. But short answer: Not directly.

    Websites, unlike your network administrator of a school, or China, or your ISP can't actually see the network protocols in use; So no - they don't KNOW you are using a VPN, they just suspect it with strong evidence. What they CAN do, is blacklist known public VPN server addresses, same way they can block known TOR exit nodes. In any case - a custom landing page can be put up, with some BS like: "In an effort to stop and prevent hacking attempts, we have made the difficult decision to block regular usage of our website and service from known VPN Server addresses. We apologize for the inconvenience.".

    So: What CAN you do if you want to use a VPN? Well: Two basic options - Self host (VPN or SSH Port Forwarding), or Rent a Server and set up a VPN there.

    With the first option - Self hosting - the easiest and most straight forward way is using available VPN software. However, you can also use SSH port forwarding to get the same result. In either case - you are simply taking your traffic from your Laptop/mobile device and routing it through your home network. If you are simply concerned about public WiFi and wish to ensure intercept attempts are impractical - this is the way to go. If you want to hide who you are: Well, that won't do it.

    Second Option - Using a Shared/Rented Server provider. Depending on how it is set up, and masked, it will be more difficult - not impossible - to single you out. Ideally you want to go in with a group of people to rent the server space. Just be aware, that some hosts are not going to like grey-area activities on their infrastructure, so make sure you do your research on who the host is - just as you should do if/when selecting a VPN service provider.

    In either of these cases, you as the administrator of these services need to understand the risks of opening your network to vectors of attack. Because of the way a VPN is set up, you are functionally punching a whole in your network and stating "Forward Connection Attempts on [selected port] to [System hosting the VPN Service]" - and if the VPN software you are using is flawed - that does open you up to being hacked. This goes the same for hosting using a rented server - shared or dedicated, just the exposure is NOT in your own network.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Why, they can't force you to do anything. you choose to use their service and comply with their terms. If you have a moral objection with how they operate then don't use their service or pirate their product.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    Besides the fact that the Supreme Court just ruled that IPs deserves privacy protection, ads present an extremely prevalent attack vector for malicious code and industrial level surveillance, data harvesting and nearly internet wide tracking. In the case of Reddit, content creators and unpaid moderators Have been subjected to escalating enshitification as the company choked out 3rd party apps so that they could sell the user generated content to AI training and advertising companies, to pump and dump their soon to be worthless IPO. It used to be the center of Internet culture and now it is a cesspool AI word salad hellscape. I don’t like it and I have left. The surveillance advertisement apparatus needs to be reigned in and real humans online allowed to protect their data and privacy, and filter their own bandwidth as they see fit

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