Internet privacy, security, age restrictions, VPNs and backups

[Evie]

From what I've seen, the "people required to prove their age" information was very specifically people who appealed an age-related Discord ban (eg, someone reported them for being the wrong age to register, and they got banned accordingly, then appealed) ; so a wholly separate - and earlier - system and issue than the UK system.

Not that this makes the UK system safer or better in any way, just that "already a leak" imply that this is actual UK (or other state) mandated verification data being leaked - which it is not.

 

[Clubber Lang]

Uk Guv respond's to petition against I.D. Cards -

Government responds after 2.7m people sign petition to scrap Digital ID cards

'This system will allow people to access government services without needing to remember multiple logins or provide physical documents.'

metro.co.uk

​

The government has dismissed a petition with more than 2.7million signatures calling for Digital ID cards to be scrapped.

 

[Clubber Lang]

Win 10 updates to end -

Millions in UK at risk of cyber-attacks as Windows 10 ends updates, Which? finds

Survey shows one in four users intend to keep using system as it is phased out, despite increased virus and malware risk

www.theguardian.com

About 5 million British computer users risk becoming vulnerable to cyber-attacks and scams after Microsoft next week stops updating its decade-old Windows 10 system, consumer campaigners have warned.

 

[Samson]

Win 10 updates to end -

Millions in UK at risk of cyber-attacks as Windows 10 ends updates, Which? finds

Survey shows one in four users intend to keep using system as it is phased out, despite increased virus and malware risk

www.theguardian.com

There are lots of resources to help you deal with this, for example:

End of 10

Support for Windows 10 ends on October 14, 2025.
Microsoft wants you to buy a new computer.
But what if you could make your current one fast and secure again?

5 Reasons to upgrade your old computer to Linux

No New Hardware, No Licensing Costs
A new laptop costs a lot of money, but several Linux operating systems are available for free. Software updates are also free, forever. You can of course show your support with donations!

Enhanced Privacy
Windows comes with lots of ads and spyware. This slows down your computer, lets companies spy on you, and increases your energy bills.

Good For The Planet
Production of a computer accounts for 75+% of carbon emissions over its lifecycle. Keeping a functioning device longer is a hugely effective way to reduce emissions. With a Linux operating system you can use your device longer.

Community & Professional Support
There are local repair cafes and independent, professional services and computer shops available for providing you help. You can find support in online forums, too.

Better User Control
Linux grants you the four freedoms of software. You are free to use, study, share, and improve the program, for as long as you wish. You are in control of your device.

 

[Clubber Lang]

Say cheese -

Hack of age verification firm may have exposed Discord users’ ID photos​

Names, email addresses and other contact details of about 70,000 global users could also have been taken

Government ID photos of about 70,000 global users of Discord, a popular messaging and chat platform among video gamers, may have been exposed after hackers compromised a company contracted to carry out age verification checks.

Some users’ names, email addresses and other contact details, IP addresses and messages with Discord’s customer service agents may also have been taken.

Government ID photos of about 70,000 global users of Discord, a popular messaging and chat platform among video gamers, may have been exposed after hackers compromised a company contracted to carry out age verification checks.

Some users’ names, email addresses and other contact details, IP addresses and messages with Discord’s customer service agents may also have been taken. The attacker has been trying to extort a ransom from the company. No full credit card details or passwords were seized.

The breach was made public last week but the potential number of lost photo IDs emerged on Wednesday. A spokesperson for the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office, which regulates data breaches, said: “We have received a report from Discord and we are assessing the information provided.”

The photos that may have been taken were provided by users making age-related appeals to Discord’s customer services contractor in cases where they may have been locked out of the decade-old platform, which allows people to hang out through text messaging or voice and video chat.

Some countries, including the UK, require social media and messaging providers to carry out age checks to ensure child safety. In the UK this has been the case since July under the Online Safety Act. Cybersecurity experts have warned of a risk that some providers of such checks, which can require government IDs, are becoming hacker targets with bad actors aware of the high volume of sensitive data.

“Recently, we discovered an incident where an unauthorised party compromised one of Discord’s third-party customer service providers,” Discord said in a statement. “The unauthorised party then gained access to information from a limited number of users who had contacted Discord through our customer support and/or trust and safety teams … Of the accounts impacted globally, we have identified approximately 70,000 users that may have had government ID photos exposed, which our vendor used to review age-related appeals.”

Discord required people who needed to prove their age to get back on to the platform to upload an image of their photo ID and Discord username.

Nathan Webb, a principal consultant at Acumen Cyber, a UK digital security company, said the breach was “very concerning”.

“Despite age verification being outsourced, businesses still have an accountability to ensure that data is stored appropriately,” he said. “It’s important for organisations to recognise that delegating certain processes does not absolve their responsibility to uphold data protection and security standards.”

Hack of age verification firm may have exposed Discord users’ ID photos

Names, email addresses and other contact details of about 70,000 global users could also have been taken

www.theguardian.com

 

[Evie]

Same story previously posted (and likewise unrelated to government mandated ID verification, not that THIS one not being related to that make the general idea any better).

 

[Samson]

Just to make it easy for anyone for whom it is not obvious, the name of the internets premier site for memes and hate speech has been autocensored.

Grab lots of popcorn: What’s just happened in Ofcom-vs-***** will be fun to watch…

Various UK pro-censorship interests of the past 10+ years have painted the Web as a “Wild West” that must be tamed for civility’s sake… and arguably “*****” is and always has been top of their hitlist for sanitisation.

But it doesn’t look like it’s going to work out that way, and attempts to do so may critically damage the Online Safety Act project.

Let’s recap:

---

***** is a huge cesspit, but like many (most?) cesspits it teems with interesting life, albeit much of it toxic. It has been perhaps the internet’s primary source of memes for 20+ years, along with any amount of japes, crass humour, shitposting, political manipulation, trolling and self-aggrandising misinformation. It exists, and if it didn’t exist then someone would probably invent it — but this is the one that we have.

And then the UK passed the Online Safety Act and regulators decided to come for ***** on the grounds that it obviously, like everything else, will be a company like Meta or Google with offices everywhere, so Ofcom will be able to summons them, set lawyers up against them.

Um…

Very Briefly, What Happened Next?​

• 10 June: Ofcom announces investigation into whether ***** is toeing the line of the Online Safety Act, see also BBC
• 13 August: Ofcom announces provisional fine for ***** for failing to toe the line of the Online Safety Act
• 22 August: *****’s legal team observe that ***** is an American company operating in America, and (aside from anything else) that the 1st Amendment exists for them so that the US Government cannot silence them, let alone the UK Government
• 27 August: ***** (and others) proactively sue Ofcom in US Courts, seeking “a legal ban on the UK communications regulator enforcing or attempting to enforce the Online Safety Act against them in the US”, see also docket
• 13 October: Ofcom confirms £20,000 + daily increment fine against *****
• Also 13 October: Apparently Ofcom has invoked sovereign immunity to get themselves out of the lawsuit

Wait, What…?​

Yeah, that’s right, Ofcom have apparently said something to the effect that “We’re The British Government, We Can’t Be Sued By Puny Humans”, but there’s a slight issue with them doing so:

…because if Ofcom is acting as an agent of the British Government in order to claim sovereign immunity, then the British Government cannot really avoid the charge that it’s attempting to apply British law to censor Americans who are resident in America using American computers to do things which — whatever you think of Pepe the Frog — are nonetheless legal in America.

That’s not going to play well.

That’s not going to play well at all, especially in the current political climate.

American self-image is literally clothed in images of throwing boxes of tea into Boston harbour as protest against British legal over-reach, and it’s drilled into schoolchildren. Even if it was ever likely, it’s doubly hard to conceive of any judge or legislator saying “…yes, America should forego the First Amendment on this occasion to Save the Children because the British Government say we should do this.”

It won’t happen, and the resultant stink will likely undermine, if not terminate, the pipeline of British activism that has pushed “age appropriate design codes” and similar British thinking into the USA, bolstering lawsuits which prick the bubble of “you may say that you’re keeping people safe but if the impact is censorial then it’s unconstitutional.”

The entire house of cards could fall down go boom.

 

[EnglishEdward]

I decided to visit the Ofcom site

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-content/ofcom-issues-update-on-online-safety-act-investigations

What I found was:

The provider of ***** has not responded to our request for a copy of its illegal harms risk assessment,
[1] nor a second request relating to its qualifying worldwide revenue. As a result, Ofcom has fined ***** £20,000.[2]
We will also impose a daily penalty of £100 per day, starting from tomorrow, for either 60 days or until *****
provides us with this information, whichever is sooner.[3]

There is a tendency in the UK to demand risk assessments on nearly everything these days.

 

[Clubber Lang]

So Ofcom/Uk Guv used 'sovereign immunity' to bail them out and tell American law to sod off.

Then said the American laws such as 'First Amendment' can't stop them from going after Americans or American companies, so a double sod off!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G3Kx80hWMAANZmw?format=png&name=900x900

Ofcom have been given a shiny new badge of authority (OSA) with full backing by the Uk Guv and they intend to flash it about.

the British Government cannot really avoid the charge that it’s attempting to apply British law to censor Americans who are resident in America using American computers to do things

Applies to the rest of the world too, bow down to the UK Online Safety Act or else.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Just to make it easy for anyone for whom it is not obvious, the name of the internets premier site for memes and hate speech has been autocensored.

Grab lots of popcorn: What’s just happened in Ofcom-vs-***** will be fun to watch…

Various UK pro-censorship interests of the past 10+ years have painted the Web as a “Wild West” that must be tamed for civility’s sake… and arguably “*****” is and always has been top of their hitlist for sanitisation.

But it doesn’t look like it’s going to work out that way, and attempts to do so may critically damage the Online Safety Act project.

Let’s recap:

---

***** is a huge cesspit, but like many (most?) cesspits it teems with interesting life, albeit much of it toxic. It has been perhaps the internet’s primary source of memes for 20+ years, along with any amount of japes, crass humour, shitposting, political manipulation, trolling and self-aggrandising misinformation. It exists, and if it didn’t exist then someone would probably invent it — but this is the one that we have.

And then the UK passed the Online Safety Act and regulators decided to come for ***** on the grounds that it obviously, like everything else, will be a company like Meta or Google with offices everywhere, so Ofcom will be able to summons them, set lawyers up against them.

Um…

Very Briefly, What Happened Next?​

• 10 June: Ofcom announces investigation into whether ***** is toeing the line of the Online Safety Act, see also BBC
• 13 August: Ofcom announces provisional fine for ***** for failing to toe the line of the Online Safety Act
• 22 August: *****’s legal team observe that ***** is an American company operating in America, and (aside from anything else) that the 1st Amendment exists for them so that the US Government cannot silence them, let alone the UK Government
• 27 August: ***** (and others) proactively sue Ofcom in US Courts, seeking “a legal ban on the UK communications regulator enforcing or attempting to enforce the Online Safety Act against them in the US”, see also docket
• 13 October: Ofcom confirms £20,000 + daily increment fine against *****
• Also 13 October: Apparently Ofcom has invoked sovereign immunity to get themselves out of the lawsuit

Wait, What…?​

Yeah, that’s right, Ofcom have apparently said something to the effect that “We’re The British Government, We Can’t Be Sued By Puny Humans”, but there’s a slight issue with them doing so:

View attachment 744948

…because if Ofcom is acting as an agent of the British Government in order to claim sovereign immunity, then the British Government cannot really avoid the charge that it’s attempting to apply British law to censor Americans who are resident in America using American computers to do things which — whatever you think of Pepe the Frog — are nonetheless legal in America.

That’s not going to play well.

That’s not going to play well at all, especially in the current political climate.

American self-image is literally clothed in images of throwing boxes of tea into Boston harbour as protest against British legal over-reach, and it’s drilled into schoolchildren. Even if it was ever likely, it’s doubly hard to conceive of any judge or legislator saying “…yes, America should forego the First Amendment on this occasion to Save the Children because the British Government say we should do this.”

It won’t happen, and the resultant stink will likely undermine, if not terminate, the pipeline of British activism that has pushed “age appropriate design codes” and similar British thinking into the USA, bolstering lawsuits which prick the bubble of “you may say that you’re keeping people safe but if the impact is censorial then it’s unconstitutional.”

The entire house of cards could fall down go boom.

On the one hand I obviously hope ***** is victorious. On the other hand, I would happily see the back of "memes".

 

[Ordnael]

Why is the designation ***** censored?
I wonder if the UK's government has 9gag on the assassination list?

 

[EnglishEdward]

All this was totally predictable.

One does wonder what is going on inside OfCom

I can only assume that Regulatory agency is imprisoning itself with internal self reinforcing group think.

Ofcom would do better to get the BBC to produce better programs.

 

[Ordnael]

Is Ofcom also behind the arresting of common people for exercising free speech or that one is just on the police?
The memes these arrests produce have been fun. Here's one:

 

[EnglishEdward]

Is Ofcom also behind the arresting of common people for exercising free speech or that one is just on the police?
The memes these arrests produce have been fun. Here's one:

For individuals it is the police.

OfCom tries (and fails) to control the big corporates.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Why is the designation ***** censored?

This?

That particular website name was censored as a means of preventing links to it being posted. At the specific time it was happening, links were being posted to kiddie porn by people creating whack-a-mole accounts from VPNs with dynamic IP addresses. IIRC.

 

[Samson]

This?

One would have thought censoring the domain (ie. including .org in the filter string) would do this without the effect on discussion.

 

[Ordnael]

Try writing fourchan with the #4 instead of four.

 

[danjuno]

One would have thought censoring the domain (ie. including .org in the filter string) would do this without the effect on discussion.

Yeah, I suggested along those lines after Ainwood posted a link to Xenforo's guide for filtering:

This 'block' was implemented way back when the forums were on vBulletin 3. I was just providing an explanation for why that site was added to the autofilter, not meaning to explain the limitations (or otherwise) of the xenforo software. However, as I see it, the Xenforo autocensor is reasonably flexible and configurable. {shrug}.

Thanks for the clarification!


Hmm. So for cases where it picks up a swear in the middle of an unrelated word, the filter can be changed from method 2 to method 1. You'd also have to censor common variants individually, but it's doable.

Links are a little trickier, but perhaps the domain instead of just the name ("malicioussite.com" instead of "malicioussite") using method 2 would work?

 

[Samson]

Is Ofcom also behind the arresting of common people for exercising free speech or that one is just on the police?

I think Ofcom is purely focused on organisations and civil penalties, not arresting individuals.

 

[Samson]

One of the bad things about the OSA is it puts me on the same side as four chan. This is what their lawyers have to say:

Below is relevant enforcement correspondence sent by the UK Office of Communications to ***** in relation to its Online Safety Act fines, disclosed publicly in the interests of transparency, and because the First Amendment allows it. Civil rights are like non-rollover vacation days: use ’em or lose ’em.

***** operates its business entirely lawfully in the United States with exactly zero regulatory paperwork required. Zero as in none. All of the paperwork called for in these letters is what the UK expects every Internet company in the world that hasn’t geo-blocked the entire island to maintain, file, and comply with. Every threat and penalty – including threats of multi-year prison terms – contained in these letters pertains to speech and conduct which is constitutionally protected in the United States.

The UK wants to make operating a publishing platform as complicated, from a regulatory perspective, as running a complex financial institution like a bank. It is no surprise that the country’s tech industry is anemic with these kinds of requirements.

In these documents, the UK regulator claims that its power has supremacy over the U.S. Constitution and U.S. law for U.S. companies and citizens on U.S. soil.

It’s also not just a “no” but a “hell no” from the perspective of the U.S. Constitution. The First Amendment means Americans don’t need a permission slip to speak to anyone, anywhere in the world. It means official censors have no say in what Americans host. The U.S. Constitution expressly protects every American from the due-process-free (Fifth Amendment) mandatory disclosure of confidential internal documents about First Amendment protected activity, especially without a judicial warrant (Fourth Amendment). It also doesn’t require Americans to waive our constitutional right of self-incrimination (also the Fifth Amendment), which this correspondence purports to do.

America must fight this, and we must fight it now. If American tech companies wind up deciding that it’s easier to obey foreign censorship laws than to assert their constitutional rights, the Internet will wind up becoming a Constitution-free zone – meaning a free speech-free zone, too. I don’t think any of us would like that outcome.